T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter said that the Uncarrier has seen a lot of new customers swtiching from other carriers as they upgrade to the new iPhones.
The long wait for the iPhone 6 has left many at AT&T and Verizon off contract, which T-Mobile sees as a major opportunity to snag subscribers from what Carter repeatedly referred to as the “duopoly.
When asked during a talk at the Wells Fargo Investor conference Thursday about who exactly T-Mobile was taking subscribers from, Carter again pointed to AT&T and Verizon.
“I think a common myth is that Sprint has to fail in order for T-mobile to succeed,” Carter said. “The vast majority of our flow is coming from AT&T and Verizon.”
Carter refuted Verizon’s claims that T-Mobile was primarily the benefactor of Verizon’s prepaid base.
“Ninety-three percent of what we’re porting in from Verizon are their postpaid customers, not their prepaid customers,” Carter insisted. “We’re very happy with the quality of the subs that we’re taking from the duopoly.”
During the talk, Carter reiterated his company’s bullish forecasts for the fourth quarter.
Carter stood by T-Mobile’s fourth quarter expectations of branded postpaid net customer additions for the year of 4.3 million to 4.7 million. He also said that T-Mobile continues to expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $5.6 to $5.8 billion. He cited the maturation of continuing cost-saving measures, such as doing away with some discounts that the company had offered to businesses.
While T-Mobile will continue to offer the corporate discounts to those that are still eligible, Carter said that after a review of those accounts, fully 75 percent were no longer eligible.