T-Mobile’s new CEO Srini Gopalan faces fierce competition from AT&T, Verizon and MVNOs
Today, T-Mobile US promoted Srini Gopalan, from chief operating officer (COO) to CEO. Gopalan is a veteran of parent company Deutsche Telekom as the head of its German home market. He has also held executive roles at Indian telecom company Bharti Airtel, Capital One and Vodafone.
Current CEO Mike Sievert will move into a newly created vice-chairman position. He said in a WSJ interview that he would continue to influence the company’s strategy. “I recruited Srini starting about a year ago with the idea that this day would come,” Sievert said.
T-Mobile has often been recognized for its high-speed 5G network and standalone 5G network capabilities. The “un-carrier” capitalized on the Sprint merger (announced in April 19, 2018; finalized April 1, 2020) to grow its customer base, winning share in both postpaid and prepaid markets and positioning itself as the industry’s fastest-growing carrier. Under Sievert’s tenure, T-Mobile drew millions of broadband customers from cable industry-dominated markets by using its 5G network to beam internet service into homes and businesses. The company is also exploring the wired-broadband business, including through a roughly $5 billion investment in a joint venture with investment company KKR.
Wireless carriers have been grappling with slowing subscriber growth, rising competition and increasingly cautious consumers unwilling to pay for premium plans. T-Mobile’s strongest competitors have been the other two major nationwide mobile carriers Verizon and AT&T. However, the growing market for Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), especially from cablecos like Comcast and Charter, has also introduced a new, significant competitive challenge.
Yet both Gopalan and Sievert said the business can keep up the pace as the mobile-phone market matures. “We really like wireless as a neighborhood in the U.S., and we have clearly outperformed everyone else,” Gopalan said in an interview, adding that T-Mobile’s home broadband business has more room to grow. “We’ve shown our hand in fiber. We like pure-play fiber, we like the idea of scaling that business, got two acquisitions already and we’re looking at what other value-creator deals are there.”
Gopalan “brings a wealth of experience a
nd is a very impressive leader, and they’ve handled this transition exceptionally well. I don’t expect there to be any fall-off at all in T-Mobile’s performance,” MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said.
Craig wrote in a research note that a new wholesale deals with Comcast and Charter could give those cable operators an even stronger price edge in business wireless — a market where T-Mobile has been clawing share. “Cable wins. And T-Mobile wins as well,” Moffett wrote, while raising questions about whether the tie-up could lead to deeper partnerships that would reshape the sector. He added that, while T-Mobile is well-positioned in consumer wireless, cable’s entry into enterprise could spark new price wars, making execution under new leadership even more critical.C
T-Mobile has made several acquisitions since it acquired Sprint in 2020. It spent $1.35 billion to acquire Ryan Reynolds’s Mint Mobile in May 2024, giving the company access to more value-conscious phone plan shoppers.
The company has also closed deals for fiber-optic plays Metronet ($4.9 billion), US Cellular ($4.4 billion), and Lumos ($950 million).
References:
https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/t-mobile-names-telecom-veteran-as-next-ceo-abb4194b
T-Mobile’s growth trajectory increases: 5G FWA, Metronet acquisition and MVNO deals with Charter & Comcast
Evercore: T-Mobile’s fiber business to boost revenue and achieve 40% penetration rate after 2 years
WSJ: T-Mobile hacked by cyber-espionage group linked to Chinese Intelligence agency
T-Mobile posts impressive wireless growth stats in 2Q-2024; fiber optic network acquisition binge to complement its FWA business
T-Mobile to acquire UScellular’s wireless operations in $4.4 billion deal
T-Mobile & EQT Joint Venture (JV) to acquire Lumos and build out T-Mobile Fiber footprint
