BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has told its customers that it will end its legacy TVision Home pay TV service, effective Dec. 30.
The move comes a little over two weeks after T-Mobile launched a multi-pronged virtual MVPD platform—confusingly carrying the TVision brand—which includes the Philo-like, 30-channel, $10-a-month TVision Vibe service, and the slightly fatter TVision Live trio of tiers, starting at $40 a month for 40 channels.
Priced at $90 a month, the more traditional fat-bundled TVision Home service was the remnants of Denver start-up Layer3 TV, which was acquired by T-Mobile in January 2018 for $325 million.
The resulting TVision Home service provided traditional DVR set-tops with pay-TV contracts and packaging, but it delivered its goods over the managed internet through regional contracts with broadband suppliers with the necessary throughput.
As such, Layer3—and TVision—were limited to a handful of urban markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia ,San Francisco, D.C., and Longmont, Colo.
T-Mobile had difficulty scaling such a service, much less enticing streaming-generation customers with it.
It’s unclear as to how many folks will be impacted by the shuttering. T-Mobile never released TVision Home customer data. Layer3 said it only had around 5,000 customers when it was purchased by the wireless carrier.
T-Mobile is currently offering its new TVision OTT services to its post-paid wireless subscribers, with reported plans to expand the offering to pre-paid and non-T-Mobile customers next year.
The company continues to work with its programming partners, several of whom have complained about the way the platform has positioned their channels.
