Skip to footer

New plans and iPhone help T-Mobile snag 1.1 million new customers

The question now is how long T-Mobile's gains, which includes the strongest consumer growth in four years, will last. 

|
Reuters
T-Mobile Chief Executive John Legere at an event in July.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Earlier this year, T-Mobile USA announced it would do away entirely with contracts and instead allow consumers to purchase an unsubsidized phone and pay for unlimited service on a month-by-month basis. Some onlookers expressed skepticism that it was really such a great deal for consumers – even if the "un-carrier" plan also arrived in lockstep with the long-awaited introduction of the T-Mobile iPhone 5. 

But today T-Mobile affirmed that the whole thing is working very well, thank you very much.

How well? Let's go to the numbers: According to T-Mobile, in the second quarter of 2013, the company added 1.1 million new customers, including 685,000 contract subscribers – apparently the strongest growth that T-Mobile has enjoyed in four years. Unsurprisingly, revenue is also up, by 27.5 percent year-over-year. 

"T-Mobile's Un-carrier approach has clearly resonated with consumers," T-Mobile chief John Legere said in a statement. "By fixing the things that drive them mad, like contracts and upgrades, and freeing them from the two-year sentences imposed on them by our competitors, they are choosing the new T-Mobile in unprecedented numbers." 

T-Mobile is currently the fourth-largest carrier in the US, lagging behind Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint. Obviously the second quarter numbers are extremely good news for T-Mobile. But some analysts have wondered whether this isn't a temporary bump that can be attributed to the iPhone 5 and the noise surrounding the initial "un-carrier" announcement. 

"The question remains as to whether [T-Mobile] can sustain the performance in postpaid as the iPhone buzz fades and competitive intensity rises," New Street's Jonathan Chaplin cautioned in a research note obtained by Reuters. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to New plans and iPhone help T-Mobile snag 1.1 million new customers
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0808/New-plans-and-iPhone-help-T-Mobile-snag-1.1-million-new-customers
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe