T-Mobile on Tuesday provided a glimpse into its third quarter results that showed sustained momentum for the Un-carrier in pre- and postpaid net additions.
As of the first half of September, T-Mobile said it has raked in a total of 753,000 branded postpaid phone net additions as well as 650,000 prepaid net customer additions. Both figures were improved from T-Mobile’s recorded totals of 646,000 postpaid phone net additions and 476,000 branded prepaid net additions in the second quarter.
T-Mobile said postpaid porting ratios were also up over the previous quarter.
“All three wireless carriers tried to match Un-carrier signature moves this quarter, like getting rid of overages and introducing unlimited data plans, but as usual, they came up short,” CEO John Legere said in a statement. “Our Q3 results so far have surpassed Q2 in postpaid phone and prepaid nets, and we are adding customers from ALL of the other guys at an increasing rate.”
The Un-carrier said the vast majority of its customer additions came from rival carriers, including 250,000 postpaid phone and prepaid net customers from Verizon, 300,000 customers from Sprint and nearly 400,000 customers from AT&T. T-Mobile said it also continues to see “strong flows” of first time customers coming to market, customers adding new lines to their existing accounts and “to a lesser extent” switching from brands other than the three tier-1 carriers.
With the second half of the month – and that post-iPhone launch with a major promotion and a new unlimited plan on the table – ahead of it, T-Mobile could very well reach or surpass its first quarter 2016 totals of 877,000 postpaid phone net additions and 807,000 prepaid net additions. Legere has already said on Twitter overall porting ratios have surpassed first quarter figures.
According to T-Mobile, much of its success in gaining new customers has come from its ability to simultaneously push for industry change while building up its own network to offer customers a viable alternative.
T-Mobile on Tuesday declared the end of Verizon and AT&T’s coverage advantage, claiming it now reaches 99.7 percent of the consumers Verizon does and offers more spectrum and cell sites per customer than either rival.
“I’m calling it. Verizon’s coverage advantage is gone,” T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray said in a statement. “Now, Verizon’s rebranding their older, slower network as ‘LTE Advanced,’ highlighting technology we launched two years ago. Even with their ‘new’ technology T-Mobile’s LTE network is still faster – just ask OpenSignal, Ookla or the FCC.”
T-Mobile said all of the figures offered in Tuesday’s release are subject to change ahead of its end of October third quarter earnings call. However, the company said it was maintaining its current financial guidance and full year outlook.
