Prized Customers to the Tune of 800,000 were Added by T-Mobile in Q4 2013

It looks like good things are happening for T-Mobile. This year, it may come as a surprise, but T-Mobile took over the third place slot for Tier 1 carriers. It pushed Sprint down to fourth place. It would appear as if its Un-carrier plan is working.

T-Mobile is also poised to acquire 700MHz A-Block licenses from Verizon. This is still pending regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice, but that only seems to be a formality.

According to the figures that were released by T-Mobile last week, the good times were rolling along last year. The numbers show that T-Mobile added 800,000 in just the last quarter of 2013. In the past the company was losing customer at a fairly quick rate. There was speculation that maybe we would only have three Tier 1 carriers.

However, last year was a turn-around year for the company. It was a bold move to step away from the standard two year contract that locked everyone in. The Un-carrier plan brought in a lot of first time smartphone customers, as well as customers who hadn’t upgraded in quite a while.

Interestingly, this news from T-Mobile comes right after AT&T announced that it would pay subscribers up to $450 apiece in credits to switch their service from T-Mobile. As you may recall, a few years back, AT&T attempted to acquire T-Mobile, but that deal fell through.

So, as not to be out done, T-Mobile countered with its own proposal. It would pay people as much as $650 to switch to T-Mobile from any carrier. As much as $350 of the total would be in the form of a MasterCard gift card. With AT&T’s refusal to comment on the matter, you can see that the rivalry continues.

In a statement at an industry conference presentation in Las Vegas last week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said that a majority of its new customers were converts from AT&T and Sprint. Nowhere near as many came from Verizon, but it does seems that those numbers are beginning to grow.

Without mixing words or being courteous, Legere said, "We are either going to take over this whole industry, or these bastards are going to change."

Overall, T-Mobile added 869,000 postpaid subscribers in the fourth quarter. This represents a 34 percent increase from the third quarter and a significant departure from 515,000 customer losses during the same period last year. Of those additions, 69,000 involved tablets or other devices aside from phones. Total customer additions were 1.6 million for the quarter, bringing total additions in 2013 to 4.4 million.

As an industry, we are beginning to see smartphone with more power, more features and more options. This, of course, usually relates to making the smartphones cost a lot more. It is looking like T-Mobile could run the risk of starting a price war. I’m sure that all of the carriers’ customers would not mind that!

John Legere had a lot of choice words to say concerning all three carriers. He called Sprint "a pile of spectrum waiting to be turned into a capability," and sarcastically referred to its network as "Sparky," playing on the name for Sprint's new fast wireless service.

In response to these comments, a spokesman for Sprint, Bill White, said that T-Mobile "should just worry about their own company." In fact, if the information is accurate, Sprint is working on a bid to attempt a purchase of T-Mobile.

In his counter, Legere said that T-Mobile could thrive in the industry as a stand-alone company or in combination with Sprint. He said, "That would provide significant scale and capability. T-Mobile, the Un-carrier, the business, the people, the brand is here to stay."