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Boosted by its merger with Sprint, T-Mobile claims to have overtaken AT&T as the second-largest wireless provider in the US. In its Q2 2020 earnings report, the self-proclaimed “un-carrier” said it now has 98.3 million total subscribers.
During the period between April to June 2020, the “new” T-Mobile recorded 1.11 million net postpaid additions, of which 253,000 were postpaid phone net additions. The carrier also recorded 133,000 prepaid net additions during the three months period ended June 30. The total net additions of 1.25 million subscribers were the best in the industry.
At the end of Q2 2020, T-Mobile had 98.3 million subscribed prepaid and postpaid users. AT&T, on the other hand, listed 92.9 million customers across its postpaid and prepaid categories by the end of the same quarter. That certainly makes T-Mobile the second-largest wireless provider in the US behind Verizon.
However, there’s a catch here. AT&T also has a “Reseller” category with 6.7 million customers. This bumps its total subscriber numbers to 99.6 million, slightly more than that of T-Mobile. The two carriers seemingly have different ways of counting their subscribers and it’s still not very clear if T-Mobile indeed has more overall customers than AT&T. The competition is certainly more fierce now.
T-Mobile generated total revenues of $17.7 billion and service revenues of $13.2 billion during the first three months after merging with Sprint. With a net income of $110 million, its earnings per share came in at 9 cents.
T-Mobile claims the second-largest wireless provider crown
T-Mobile says its net customer additions of 1.25 million in Q2 2020 was its 22nd consecutive quarter of industry-leading performance. Further, the carrier has also led the industry for 26 consecutive quarters in terms of postpaid phone net customer additions.
With net additions of 253,000 customers in Q2 2020, T-Mobile now has 65.1 million postpaid phone customers. AT&T has 62.8 million postpaid phone subscribers. Postpaid subscribers are regarded as a key metric for success and are valued more highly by the investment community.
T-Mobile is also America’s largest 5G network in terms of coverage. The carrier’s 5G networks now cover more than 250 million people across 1.3 million square miles of area. That’s more than double AT&T’s geographic coverage and “exponentially” more than Verizon.
This vast difference is because of the different types of wireless spectrum each carrier is using for its 5G networks. Verizon uses the mmWave technology, which offers better speeds but poor coverage. It cannot penetrate obstacles as efficiently as the low-band/mid-band spectrum used by AT&T and T-Mobile.
T-Mobile recently announced the launch of its new Standalone 5G (SA 5G) promising better coverage and performance compared to its current 5G offering. This version of 5G does not depend on the 4G LTE foundation that its existing 5G network relies on.