The last few months have seemingly been good for the wireless carriers in the US; at least for some of them anyways. Just the other day, the country’s fourth largest carrier, Sprint, reported net additions in subscriber numbers for four months in a row – the first time the company has been able to achieve that feat in almost three and a half years. Now, it is the turn of T-Mobile to report that it too is seeing a sudden influx of customers, which has helped it to add more high-value, postpaid subscribers in the current quarter than it was able to gain in the whole of the second quarter of this year. The company has also reportedly added customers to its MetroPCS prepaid brand, which, if anything, has grown faster according to the revelation by Mr. Legere. MetroPCS, he claimed, has added thrice as many subscribers this current quarter as it did in Q2, 2015.
The claim was made by the always outspoken and very often controversial CEO of the Un-carrier, Mr. John Legere, at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia technology conference in New York City on Friday. The CEO of Sprint, Mr. Marcelo Claure, had made his claims at the same event a day earlier. Of course, keeping with his style, the T-Mobile CEO simply had to tweet about his Communacopia experience once he was done with his interview at the event. “Just got done giving the #Communacopia crowd a glimpse into how the #uncarrier is kicking ass and taking names”. While the numbers for the current quarter are not officially out as yet, seeing as there are still about two weeks to go till the end of the quarter, the second quarter was a particularly good one for the company, and helped it go past Sprint to become the third largest carrier in the country. Un-carrier managed net additions of over 2.1 million subscribers in Q2, 2015, of which, around a million signed up for the company’s postpaid plans.
However, with carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile making giant strides with their subscriber numbers, the biggest of ’em all, Verizon, has been having a none-too exciting time of late. On a day when the CEO of Sprint was upbeat about its growth prospects going into 2016, Verizon issued a statement, saying, “While well-positioned for the future, Verizon’s full-year 2016 earnings may plateau at 2015 levels as the company manages near-term impacts”.