T-Mobile US Inc. is scrapping its efforts to crack into the home television market on its own after the wireless company failed to build its skinny bundle of channels into a profitable service.
The cellphone carrier said Monday it will wind down the service, called TVision, on April 29 and steer its wireless customers toward Google’s YouTube TV instead.
Rival online video packages from Sony Corp. and others have shut operations or raised prices on live-TV service to keep up with programmers that continue to raise their fees.
T-Mobile launched a remade version of its TV service last year to cater to its base of wireless customers—the country’s second-largest, after Verizon Communications Inc. It also targeted existing cable subscribers and the millions of U.S. households that have dropped TV subscriptions from their bills, opting instead to buy broadband-internet service as a stand-alone item and sign up for a panoply of video services such as Netflix and Disney+.
The new product was designed to supplement T-Mobile’s home broadband-internet service, which is scheduled to open up to the general public later this year.
