T-Mobile US Inc to surpass Sprint Corporation in customer base by the end of 2014

[Transcendence]

T-Mobile’s already boasted of its prepaid subscriber base being higher than anyone else’s, and this is no surprise – the company’s always been a big prepaid carrier anyway. Now, however, T-Mobile is back to boast about its subscriber numbers beating out Sprint by the end of the year. T-Mobile is expected to have 15.64 million users by the end of the year, beating Sprint by about 450,000 customers (Sprint’s 15.19 million).

 

Sprint has been losing customers for a year or two now, as the company struggles to transform its network to win back customers who left due to poor cell signals, dropped calls and other phone issues. With T-Mobile’s uncarrier approach, the Deutsche Telekom company has been on the rise, campaigning that customers deserve better from their carrier – and that T-Mobile can provide what they’re looking for.

 

And there’s been some success with its campaign. Not only has the company seen rising numbers in the last few quarters, likely due to T-Mobile finally carrying the iPhone 5 nearly two years ago now (and the iPhone 5s last year), but T-Mobile’s also dropped the early termination fees for new customers who leave their postpaid carriers (Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T). T-Mobile CEO John Legere has been a social media voice for the company, poking fun at AT&T and Verizon whenever he can. Legere seems to have particular dislike for AT&T, though he still takes jabs at Verizon.

 

T-Mobile’s Valentine’s Day ad earlier this year poked fun at Verizon, with the ad saying that the guy couldn’t take his girlfriend out to dinner because “Verizon took all my money.†It’s likely the case that, if your Verizon bill costs so much money that you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t take your girlfriend out for wine and caviar (or maybe you should try Verizon’s prepaid service, for that matter), but Legere’s not one to let up on the competition.

 

This proclamation of Legere’s – that T-Mobile will become the third largest US carrier by year’s end—may be a win for T-Mobile in particular, but beating Sprint out in anything these days isn’t such a grand honor. After all, Verizon and AT&T still dominate in America when it comes to widespread and reliable carrier coverage, no matter how much T-Mobile touts its LTE data speeds as the fastest in the country.