T-Mobile announced yesterday that they have finally overtaken rival Sprint in the prepaid wireless market to become the No. 1 prepaid wireless provider in the U.S.. According to the most recent figures, T-Mobile now has 15.64 million prepaid customers, beating Sprint’s 15.19 million customers by nearly half a million. AT&T and Verizon are even further behind with 11.34 million and 6.04 million customers respectively.
These staggering numbers come only a short time after T-Mobile rejected a $15 billion buyout from Iliad and abandoned talks with Sprint over a merger. CEO and president of T-Mobile US, Inc., John Legere is ecstatic.
“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,” Legere said in a press release. “As a matter of fact, I’m going on record–I predict we’ll overtake Sprint in total customers by the end of this year. Not someday. Not next year. This year. Americans are voting with their feet, and they’re joining this Un-carrier revolution by the millions.”
The ‘Un-carrier revolution’ does indeed seem to be quite popular and T-Mobile’s MetroPCS brand in particular has enjoyed unprecedented gains since its merger with the corporate giant. Of course, I would argue that most of their gains are probably on their new no-contract plans, where you actually purchase your phone on a contract instead of the minutes–not quite the same thing as a real prepaid plan but still better than a traditional contract, I suppose. Regardless, it seems like the ‘nation’s fastest LTE 4G network’ is quickly rising the ranks. If only their coverage was as good.]]>
