T-Mobile CEO Makes 2015 Predictions

The slightly abrasive T-Mobile CEO John Leger has come out with a press release announcing T-Mobile’s plan for the new year along with a sort of review of 2014 and predictions for 2015. The article itself is pretty long and most of it is simply bragging about how T-Mobile is better than anyone else. (Did you really expect anything different?) But some of the points mentioned are worth repeating. Here are the highlights:

T-Mobile Will be the No. 3 Carrier—Eventually

You might remember in August that Legere bragged that T-Mobile would pass Sprint and become the third largest carrier in the nation by the end of 2014–an announcement that really lit a fire under Sprint management and prompted them to make some big changes including switching CEOs around. But, while T-Mobile did make some leaps in 2014 I would be surprised if it really did manage to overtake Sprint this year. Of course, we won’t know for sure until Q4 earnings are reported. Seems to me that boast might have been a little preemptive, which Legere admits in the article:
“T-Mobile will – officially – become the No. 3 wireless company in America in 2015. This summer, I said we’d blow by Sprint by the end of 2014 to become the No. 3 wireless company in the US. They have been swinging the bat since I made that statement, so we won’t know where things stand until we get the final score after we both report Q4 earnings, but whether it is now – or soon – I’m telling you, it’s a done deal!”
Very nice cover, Legere.

T-Mobile Will Be a Serious Competitor For Verizon

Probably the most notable ‘prediction’ that T-Mobile makes in their release is the intention to expand coverage in order to compete with Verizon (undoubtedly the largest network in the US) by the end of the year. Verizon currently covers 303 million people (around 95% of the nation). T-Mobile is trailing behind with 264 million, but predicts their network will expand to match Verizon and, Legere argues, because T-Mobile has a faster network, they will be a direct competitor. Of course, there aren’t any details about how T-Mobile intends to expand to cover an additional 40 million customers with LTE, or any sort of timeline for it, so I suspect much of that is just boast. But hey, might as well set your sights high, right? Right now, I would say that T-Mobile probably has the patchiest LTE network in a lot of areas, so they’ll have a lot of work to do in order to really compete with Verizon.

MetroPCS Will Still Be Around (or something)

I got pretty excited when I saw MetroPCS listed as one of the bullet points in the ‘predictions’ article, but unfortunately, I think Legere pretty much mentioned them just to remind everyone that the company is still around. There hasn’t been a whole lot of news out of them recently, but they have definitely expanded quite a bit this year, going from around 15 metro areas to about 45 in 2014 alone. Unfortunately, Legere basically just said that MetroPCS will continue to expand and ‘cement its leadership position’ in 2015. I’m not sure that I would count them as the leader in prepaid right now, but I suppose it looks bad to say otherwise, right?

Insert Bragging Statement Here

The rest of the article is pretty much promotional bragging in the typical style of Legere’s brash public persona. While  it is humorous, easy to read and very conversational, it doesn’t really say much, although they did include a helpful chart that is in no way slanted to make T-Mobile look like they’re the best at everything *cough*

2015chart

Anyway… I am excited to see that T-Mobile is making improvements and giving the telecommunications market something to think about, but I have to say I’ve not really been very impressed with their network during the last few months of testing it out. They certainly have a long way to go, but competition is never a bad thing for industry. Regardless, it will be interesting to see where 2015 takes us!]]>

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