Photo courtesy T-Mobile
T-Mobile CEO John Legere must be pretty pleased with himself today.Sprint this morning released its latest quarterly financial results, and the number that's attracting the most attention is 57 million. That's how many subscribers the wireless carrier now has, 1 million fewer than T-Mobile. Legere, perhaps best known for his WWE-like foul-mouthed rants, had claimed the mantle of third-largest U.S. wireless carrier in February, but now we have independent confirmation.
It should be noted that T-Mobile is still some distance behind AT&T (124 million subscribers) and Verizon Wireless (135 million subscribers).How did T-Mobile manage to surpass Sprint? The company received a cool $4 billion from AT&T as a breakup fee after their proposed merger was killed by US regulators in December 2011. T-Mobile then used that money to improve its network and roll out a number of so-called "Uncarrier" initiatives, like cheap data plans and a series of financial instruments (including a debit card) for qualifying customers. The company has also experimented with a somewhat controversial practice that lets customers stream music from select apps (including Apple Music and Spotify) without counting against their data caps.While T-Mobile may have earned a victory lap today, let's not forget that this is the same company that was recently forced to pay $90 million in fines after being accused by the FTC in 2014 of bilking its customers out of millions of dollars in unwanted premium features like text message horoscopes and celebrity gossip.My customers and employees need to be bragged about!!!!!! https://t.co/s7alCBjdIv
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 1, 2015