Bloomberg Businessweek writes about T-Mobile CEO John Legere’s shake-up of traditional business models in the US wireless industry in “T-Mobile’s Wacky Plan to Trash the Wireless Business Model“. Earlier this year, Macquarie Bank predicted T-Mobile would lose 1.6 million subscribers this year and an additional 400,000 in 2014. But that was before T-Mobile started to shake things up in the marketplace. In the second quarter, T-Mobile added 685,000 postpaid customers beating US industry leaders Verizon (472,000) and AT&T (153,000).
Legere has not been overcome by a temporary spasm of crazed generosity. His is merely the first company in the U.S. market to acknowledge reality. Wireless telecommunications in the U.S. is on its way to becoming what the industry has fought against for two decades: a commodity business, where carriers and un-carriers all look the same and prices keep going down.
T-Mobile has been investing to turn around the market perception. As the number four player in the US, T-Mobile needed to convince customers that its network coverage may be smaller but it is still big enough. Its network now covers 200M people, about 60% of the population of the US.
T-Mobile’s year of un-carrier behavior has proved that in fact, above about 150 million POPs, customers are sensitive to price. And the simpler plans get, the harder it is to shade price differences with tiered plans and phone subsidies. All the other carriers are going to have to come down and fight with the smiling guy in pink.
The story hits news stands on November 1, but is available online.