T-Mobile Hometown Techover Contest: Big Prizes, One Small Town

T-Mobile capped off a week of announcements with T-Mobile Hometown Techover, a contest to find one town in America that will benefit from equipment and upgrades totaling more than $3 million. Communities with populations of 50,000 or less are eligible to compete.

Here are the elements of the T-Mobile Hometown Techover contest:

• A $200,000 T-Mobile Hometown community grant and consulting services from Smart Growth America
• Little League field refurbishment including a tech upgrade and T-Mobile Little League Call Up Grant support
• An upgrade to a public space such as a library, community center or town square
• Concierge enrollment in T-Mobile’s Project 10 Million and Connecting Heroes programs
• “Magenta wave” services, through which 100 households will get free wireless service and home Internet for one year, four new 5G phones and an HD TV
• A free concert for the community from duo Florida Georgia Line

“Magenta wave” is an umbrella term referring to T-Mobile initiatives aimed at small towns that will feature T-Mobile Home Internet access.

The 5G Home Internet fixed wireless service was launched earlier this week. The service will be priced at $60 per month for unlimited services, with no added taxes or other fees.

T-Mobile says that the service is expected to deliver 100 Mbps of service to most new customers. In all, the carrier is targeting 30 million U.S. households – including 10 million in rural areas.

T-Mobile also said this week that it would create 7,500 jobs in rural America, including 5,000 at retail outlets the company will be opening and 2,500 for Hometown Experts that will not have a physical work location but will handle most of the same tasks as retail employees.

The three announcements – the T-Mobile Hometown Techover, the 5G Home Internet service and T-Mobile Hometown – made it a big week for the carrier. “For far too long big cities have reaped the benefits of upgraded technologies while small towns are left to wait months or years for their turn. That’s helped fuel the digital divide in rural America,” Jon Freire, Executive Vice President of Consumer Markets at T-Mobile, said in a press release.

Joan Engebretson contributed to this report,