T-Mobile Again Leads Wireless Industry Subscriber Growth
T-Mobile is continuing its industry-leading growth, adding 903,000 net postpaid phone customers in Q4 and 3.1 million for the year, the carrier said Wednesday. In addition, it had its lowest average postpaid phone churn ever, at 0.86% throughout 2024. The company is targeting public safety agencies with T-Priority based on 5G network slicing, T-Mobile executives highlighted on a call with analysts.
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“By some measures, we’re the most successful telecom in the world,” said CEO Mike Sievert, adding that T-Mobile’s best years aren’t behind it. “I want to be clear -- in our storied growth history, 2024 was our greatest growth year ever across multiple metrics.”
Said Callie Field, president-Business Group, T-Priority has already been offered to first responders in Los Angeles, Nashville, North Carolina and Florida. “We listen to our customers, we listen to first responders, we listen to [chief information officers] who say, ‘Look, we really have a need for better coverage, for more capacity, and we need more modern solutions.’”
T-Priority slicing offers first responders 40% more capacity on the network at 2.5 times the speed, Field added. In times of extreme network congestion, “we're able to allocate more than five times the network resources that we do to the average consumer.” Slicing is a technology that creates virtual networks on top of a shared network, which is possible on 5G stand-alone networks.
Sievert noted that T-Mobile offered a showcase for its slicing capabilities in November, during the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix (see 2411180012). New York City last year awarded the carrier a contract to become an anchor customer for T-Priority. “There's no city in the country with higher standards or more complex needs than New York,” he said.
T-Mobile reported service revenue of $16.9 billion in Q4, up 6% year over year, and net income of $3 billion, up 48%. The company added 428,000 fixed wireless access subscribers in Q4, 1.7 million in 2024. Free cash flow was $4.1 billion in Q4.
Also on the call, CFO Peter Osvaldik said T-Mobile is ready to quickly integrate UScellular customers if regulators approve that deal, despite some opposition (see 2501290019). “We learned a lot from the very successful integration with Sprint.”
The T-Mobile network “held up very well” during the California wildfires, Sievert said. The carrier restored 99% of it “within a few days, thanks to advanced network self-optimizing technologies,” he said: “As we speak, our people remain on the ground, engaging in community support, and we'll continue to do what we can to help.”
Verizon executives highlighted that company’s push into AI during its financial call last week (see 2501240049). Sievert said the move to AI will help T-Mobile demonstrate the advantages it has in spectrum holdings versus its peers. “In other words, I don't see [AI as] being a reason why we're going to need more capacity or more spectrum -- it's going to be a reason to showcase the massively superior capacity that we already have.”