- The Trump Org unveiled a new cellular service this week: Trump Mobile
- Details about the service and the device hard to come by, including network partners and phone manufacturers
- The service promises to offer 5G service through “all three major cellular carriers,” but none of the carriers are talking
The Trump Organization with great fanfare this week unveiled a new mobile phone service, branded Trump Mobile, promising to upturn the mobile industry as we know it. But details remain sketchy, particularly when it comes to which networks it’s using and how phones are being made.
The press release announcing Trump Mobile says it will offer 5G services through all three major cellular carriers, suggesting it’s an MVNO because it doesn’t have its own facilities-based network. However, the terms of service say it’s “powered by” Liberty Mobile Wireless LLC, which is believed to be an MVNO using T-Mobile’s network.
Little is known about Liberty Mobile’s role here and the company didn’t respond to requests for comment. Even the FAQ section of its website came up empty; it consists of the dummy text: “What is Lorem Ipsum?” in all five bullet points.
The Trump Organization said they timed the launch of Trump Mobile to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of President Trump’s first presidential campaign, but several glitches appeared to suggest it was rather hastily put together.
For example, Reuters reported that the coverage map initially displayed for the service labeled the body of water south of Texas as the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Gulf of America, which is President Trump’s preferred name. Oops.
Who are the carrier partners, really?
But back to the carrier partners. Besides saying that it’s working with all three major carriers, Trump Mobile said its service is “on the nation’s largest 5G network,” further suggesting (by some accounts) that it’s using T-Mobile’s 5G network.
T-Mobile didn’t respond to Fierce’s inquiries. We figured maybe Trump Mobile is in the process of lining up MVNO agreements with Verizon and AT&T to round out the list and meet the claim about using “all three major carriers.”
But efforts to track down that theory came up short. Verizon didn’t respond to a request for comment about an MVNO deal and AT&T declined to comment. Fierce also reached out to Trump Mobile for answers and we haven’t heard back.
Of course, a lot of celebrities are jumping on the MVNO bandwagon, starting most famously with Ryan Reynolds and Mint Mobile and more recently with the trio of actors behind Smartless Mobile.
“An MVNO is a perfect opportunity for a brand with the ability to reach a committed audience,” said Techsponential founder Avi Greengart. “I'm surprised that the Trump Organization hasn't tried one before.”
Trump Mobile could go MVNE route
Most MVNOs use one of the three major U.S. networks, but a few MVNOs use the networks of all three, like Red Pocket Mobile, USMobile and Patriot Mobile, noted Jeff Moore, principal of Wave7 Research.
It’s possible Trump Mobile could work through a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE), a company that provides the infrastructure and services an MVNO needs to launch service using one or more of the Big 3 wireless carriers’ networks. Examples of MVNEs include Reach Mobile and MVNO Connect.
“It only makes sense to me that they would use an MVNE. It’s just a much simpler way to go and MVNE is definitely a burgeoning market. There are plenty of companies out there that can provide all the connectivity and services that an MVNO would need,” Moore told Fierce. “It’s a well-developed part of the wireless ecosystem.”
Trump’s ‘made in USA’ device
While details about the network provider are vague, what about the phones, especially the $499 T1 Android phone that’s either going to be available in August, like the press release states, or September, which the website states?
There again, the Trump Organization is offering up few details.
The Trump Mobile service will follow a bring your own device (BYOD) model, but it’s also touting the T1 phone, a golden smartphone it says is “proudly designed and built in the United States.”
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could manufacture a $499 smartphone in the United States under the kind of timeline Trump Mobile is talking about. If it were that easy, Apple probably would have done it by now to avoid the on-and-off tariffs that President Trump threatens over its iPhones.
Hence, a lot of people are interpreting the Trump Organization’s claims about “made in America” to be aspirational rather than happening in the here and now.
Appearing on the Benny Johnson podcast, Eric Trump seemed to confirm that notion when he said “eventually, all the phones can be built in the United States of America.”
Analysts say it’s highly improbable that manufacturing will occur in the United States in the near term. It’s not possible to manufacture smartphones in the U.S. without globally sourced parts, including many from China, Greengart said.
It’s conceivable to import all the parts, pay the import tariffs and then assemble the phones in the U.S. using high-priced labor that will need to be trained, he said. But it also might require importing a few production engineers from China or Taiwan.
“It wouldn’t be cost-effective, but you certainly could do it. However, even if that was your plan, you would need a lot more lead time than what Trump Mobile is promising,” Greengart said.
Some analysts have speculated that based on the specs, the Trump T1 is a variation of a Wingtech model, similar to a recent T-Mobile REVVL. If that’s the case, it suggests the T1 phone is manufactured in China, which would be super ironic.
A Trump Organization spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that “manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.” That would seemingly rule out Orbic, which recently broke ground for manufacturing in Hauppauge, Long Island, New York. But that could include Purism, which is based in California and does “made in America” phones.
Purism CEO Todd Weaver told Bloomberg that it took over a decade to get to the point where his company can claim its electronics are American made; it still needs to source components like metal chassis from China.
Will Elon Musk use the T1?
On “The Benny Show,” Eric Trump was asked if he has any idea if Elon Musk will be using one of the Trump Mobile phones. Eric Trump said he’s a big fan of Musk and “I hope he uses one and I hope every Republican uses one and I hope frankly every American uses one.”
He added that Trump Mobile will be doing things that “the cell phone companies have just not done well.”
Conflicts of interest
Of course, critics point out that selling a Trump-branded phone service is a major conflict of interest since the president appoints the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a federal agency that regulates phone companies. The FCC is currently led by Trump loyalist Chairman Brendan Carr.
If there are MVNO negotiations underway, it’s possible that any carrier that doesn’t provide the Trump Organization with the most favorable MVNO terms could face regulatory difficulties when attempting to obtain merger approval or some other action by the FCC, according to New Street Research policy analyst Blair Levin in a June 16 note for investors.
“There is also the implicit threat that if the facilities-based carriers do not adequately assist the Trump Mobile offering, the FCC will adopt rules that mandate the MVNO provisions that Trump Mobile wanted but could not achieve in private negotiations,” Levin said.
Bottom line: Levin doesn’t think the Trump mobile service, priced at $47.45/month, will materially affect markets. “But it bears watching, as having the weight of a federal regulatory commission potentially adopting policies to assist the enterprise is different from any situation in the past,” he concluded.