T-Mobile US today announced the Un-carrier has overtaken rivals AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to become the No.1 U.S. wireless provider in the prepaid mobile market.
The difference between T-Mobile and Sprint is narrow.
T-Mobile US has 15.64 million prepaid customers compared to Sprint’s 15.19 million customers in the prepaid market. AT&T most recently reported 11.34 million prepaid customers. Verizon Wireless reports 6.04 million prepaid customers.
John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile US, said: “The momentum we’re seeing with our T-Mobile and MetroPCS brands is outstanding, and the fact that we’ve blown by everyone to take the No.1 spot in prepaid is icing on the cake.”
T-Mobile, which is facing a takeover bid from the French telecom carrier, has posted its fifth consecutive quarter of postpaid subscriber growth in Q2 2014 as the carrier gained 908,000 postpaid net additions.
In fact, T-Mobile continued to drive subscriber growth through its Un-carrier strategies. The Un-carrier tactics indicate that in the short-term, T-Mobile is willing to forsake ARPU growth to broaden its postpaid subscriber base as evidenced by postpaid ARPU declining 7 percent year-to-year in Q2 2014.
“Despite the drop in ARPU, T-Mobile continued to grow revenue and improve margins. T-Mobile’s strategies will prove lucrative in the long-term as revenue generated from its larger subscriber base will begin to offset price cuts in its service plans and customer acquisition costs, including paying for early termination fees,” said Eric Costa, telecom analyst, TBR, recently.
The Un-carrier’s MetroPCS brand effectively tripled its market reach to 45 major metro areas and nearly 10,000 stores, while migrating its customers onto 4G LTE network. This aggressive expansion of markets and coverage has led MetroPCS to grow to over 10 million customers.
With over 1.2 million new customers since this time last year, MetroPCS has been adding customers at a rate of one customer every 27 seconds.
