T-Mobile announces it is now the second-largest mobile carrier in the US

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T-Mobile reported its Q2 2020 earnings, on Thursday, August 6, 2020. The results are surprising as the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint has increased the company’s profits by a large margin. This has catapulted the mobile carrier ahead of AT&T, becoming the second-largest carrier in the US.

Although many argue that the boost T-Mobile has seen may not be what it seems, the figures speak for themselves. Through the merger, the company has added 1,245,000 “net additions” to its existing ones, now having a total user count of 98.3 million. To put this into perspective, AT&T finished Q2 2020 with 93 million.

With that said, the tech world is currently in disagreement. The Verge reported about how T-Mobile has made this comparison. This is because, after the merger, the company compared its 98.3 million prepaid and postpaid clients to the same category of subscribers to AT&T. However, they did not count the additional 6.7 million customers that the latter has in its “Reseller” category. If we add all of the figures together, we get T-Mobile with 98.3 million, vs. AT&T with 99.6 million customers. 

It is difficult to establish which company is ahead, as both of them have different categories of subscribers, some of which are counted and some aren’t. For example, AT&T also has an uncounted category called “Connected Devices” (71.8 million) that T-Mobile has not taken into consideration. The magenta carrier’s spokesperson stated that they added the company leads in prepaid customers as well as postpaid and postpaid “other” (sim-compatible devices that were not mobile phones).

This creates an issue because the companies do not have the same client categories, making it difficult for them to go head to head. However, it is generally accepted that a “subscriber” does not refer to an individual, but a single “sim card.” With many individuals having more than one sim card, it is difficult to do a proper headcount to establish the size of the userbase. 

Regardless of what figures were considered and counted, one thing is certain: From a financial point of view, the decision to merge T-Mobile and Sprint has undoubtedly given the company a very large boost. Besides, T-Mobile has stated that its 2.5 GHz has been re-activated for Atlanta, Dallas, and Washington DC, in addition to most of Chicago, Huston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia that were already covered.

The recent merger and the quick development of its 5G network may soon turn T-Mobile into a potential threat for Verizon that currently has 119.9 million subscribers.

So, what do you think about the recent merger between T-Mobile and Sprint? Is it enough for the company to go head to head with Verizon in the coming years, or does the math of the carrier tell a story that’s too good to be real? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Deep Ballu