T-Mobile was once the fourth largest U.S. carrier among the four “majors.” In September 2012, the carrier appointed John Legere as CEO and things started looking up for the company. Legere was a brash, bombastic executive who wore his hair rock star long, preferred wearing a T-Mobile t-shirt to a suit, and insulted his rivals constantly. More importantly, he put his customers first and unlike most CEOs in the industry, he seemed to know about the phones his company was selling.
T-Mobile is now the nation’s largest prepaid wireless carrier
Based on their recently reported Q3 earnings reports, the number of prepaid customers at T-Mobile, 21,595,000, tops the number of prepaid subscribers reported by Verizon, 21,420,000. AT&T is third with 19,391,000 prepaid subscribers at the end of the third quarter.
Verizon has traditionally focused on postpaid because that’s where the big bucks are. 556 Ventures analyst Bill Ho believes that some of the losses that Verizon has experienced in its prepaid business segment were the result of the carrier letting customers on its lowest-costing prepaid plans leave.
Meanwhile, the next goal that T-Mobile has is to take over the number one spot from Verizon in postpaid.
