With 15.64 million subscribers, T-Mobile found it fit to announce today that it is now the largest prepaid service provider in the United States.
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By comparison, Sprint now has 15.19 million prepaid subscribers, which are split between Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. AT&T and Verizon, meanwhile, lag behind T-Mobile with 11.34 million and 6.04 million prepaid subscribers, respectively.
T-Mobile also announced that MetroPCS, which the carrier merged with back in 2012, surpassed the 10 million subscriber mark, adding 1.2 million subscribers in the last year. T-Mobile CEO John Legere is unsurprisingly happy about the news.
“The good news just keeps on coming for T-Mobile,” said Legere. “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 even made a bold, yet not entirely unreasonable, assertion that T-Mobile will surpass Sprint in prepaid and postpaid customers, combined.
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From a business perspective, investors are more fond of postpaid subscriber numbers than prepaid. With customers stuck in two-year contracts or device payment plans, postpaid subscribers are seeing as a more reliable source of profit for wireless providers. Even so, T-Mobile’s prepaid subscriber numbers are nothing to scoff at.
Sprint, meanwhile, seems to be in a bit of a funk. After it reportedly killed its planned merger with T-Mobile, the third largest carrier in the U.S. announced that it would replace Dan Hesse with Brightstar CEO Marcelo Claure as the company’s president and CEO.