Many suggest that it is only a matter of time before T-Mobile finally overtakes Sprint as the third largest wireless carrier.
According to T-Mobile CEO John Legere, however, it has already happened.
Sprint and T-mobile register roughly 55 million customers each, with Sprint having gained a number of customers over the last two quarters, reaching 55.9 million customers. T-Mobile ended the year with a little over 55 million customers.
According to the official numbers, Sprint is winning. Only by less than a million customers, but it's still winning.
The official numbers, however, don't always reflect actual numbers. According John Legere, Sprint is counting 1.7 million users through resale partners that have been inactive for six months or more. Legere believes that these customers should not be counted by Sprint.
Sprint maintains that it has used this method for years because of a policy that says that it will not remove customers until its resale partners officially notify the company that the customer has left.
If T-Mobile hasn't already taken over Sprint as the third largest carrier, it is highly likely that it will within the next quarter.
T-Mobile had an incredible 2014. The self-proclaimed un-carrier introduced groundbreaking feature after groundbreaking feature during the year, starting by introducing plans that don't tie users down as much as previous phone plans and contracts did. T-Mobile has largely gone the prepaid route, in which a user pays for their phone service for the month and isn't tied down to any two-year contract. Users often do, however, opt to pay for their phones over a period of one or two years, as prepaid phone plans rarely come with subsidized handsets.
T-Mobile has gone beyond simply offering things such as prepaid plans. It has gone further by giving users access to their favorite streaming services without all that music streaming counting against their data plans.
Because of its genius marketing skills and great new features and plans, T-Mobile is gaining subscribers faster than any other mobile carrier. In fact, the likes of AT&T and Sprint are fast losing subscribers. AT&T still is far ahead Sprint and T-Mobile, but it would not be unheard of for T-Mobile to overtake AT&T within the next decade, especially if T-Mobile continues to gain customers at the rate that it has been.
The growth of T-Mobile is a great thing for customers who might be looking to get away from the wrath of Verizon and AT&T. While T-Mobile still does not have anywhere near the network size or power of its two larger competitors, at this rate, it is only a matter of time before it does.
