John Freier, the president of the Consumer Group over at T-Mobile, spoke at the Wells Fargo TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications) summit on Tuesday. One of the subjects that Freier addressed was the carrier’s apparent transformation to a digital Mobile Network Operator. T-Mobile seems to want its subscribers to manage their accounts using the T-Life app. Many believe that the plan is to turn digital, close stores, let reps go, report higher profits and get the stock higher.
The T-Life app handles two thirds of T-Mobile’s overall upgrades
According to Freier, “What we wanted to do is to not think about T-Life through a cost transformation effort but think about T-Life through an experience transformation effort that operating efficiencies will come [from] over time. Right now, we’ve got 85 million downloads on T-Life, and we’re regularly seeing north of 20 million monthly engaged customers. We’ve got two thirds of our overall upgrades that are happening now on the platform and that really speaks to the power of the app.”
You might have seen the television commercials for T-Mobile where spokesman Billy Bob Thornton says, “…for years everyone thought Verizon had the best network. Because they did. But now the best mobile network in the U.S. is T-Mobile…” The spot goes on to say that third-party testing shows that T-Mobile now has the best mobile network in the 5G era.
Jon Freier, president of the Consumer Group at T-Mobile, recently spoke at the Wells Fargo TMT summit. | Image credit-T-Mobile
Freier said at the summit, “We’ve been a crowned as America’s best overall network, which is an incredible achievement, but we’re trying to break through all that noise and tell people that you’re right, if you tried T-Mobile years and years ago, not so good, we had challenges. But if you haven’t tried T-Mobile lately, it’s a completely different game. Now we’re in the early innings of really getting credit for [our network] and one of the big opportunities for us is to capture and incentivize network seekers to move to T-Mobile.”
UScellular customers will be moved to T-Mobile “in a big way” starting next year
Freier revealed that T-Mobile has started integrating UScellular’s network into the T-Mobile network. The result is that T-Mobile and UScellular customers are experiencing better coverage and improved performance. He adds that starting next year, T-Mobile will be moving customers “in a big way” from UScellular to T-Mobile.
What you T-Mobile customers want to know about is the holiday deals that T-Mobile will offer this quarter. Freier says that this is his 32nd fourth quarter working in the industry. As for deals, Freier says that T-Mobile likes to promote what he calls “big headline offers.” These generate interest in the carrier, generate traffic into the stores, and show customers the deals that the carrier can offer. He didn’t mention any specific deal but be alert for these “headline offers.” You’ll read about them in PhoneArena.
Most new customers are selecting premium plans, T-Mobile‘s Consumer Chief said. He also said that T-Mobile continues to have momentum and has revised higher its estimate of fourth quarter net new postpaid phone subscribers to 3.3 million. Freier says that the carrier is feeling good about its momentum. He also notes that T-Mobile can play in the current environment where customers are quick to switch and upgrade their wireless plans. He states that the carrier can also compete in a lower switching and upgrade environment.
Freier recaps how T-Mobile became arguably the best network in the U.S.
As for those who feared that the administration’s immigration policies would negatively impact prepaid business, Freier says that there have been no signs of any changes. What he did say that it is hard for him to believe that T-Mobile is now at the point where it is arguably the best network in the country. He says, “But after we got the first 100 megahertz spectrum, the 600 megahertz from the incentive auction, plus the Sprint transaction with all the 2.5 gigahertz, you started to believe that we could put this all together and create something special, which is what we’ve been able to do.
He adds, “T-Mobile. AT&T and Verizon have more than 200 million customers. 70 million of them chose AT&T or Verizon because they had the best network back then. Now, we have the best network, and it’s a huge opportunity for us to go in and convince those customers that we have the very best network.”
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