T-Mobile grew by 8.3M subscribers in 2014

The Paramount Theater in Seattle played host to T-Mobile's Uncarrier 5.0 event in June.

T-Mobile’s customer growth spurt continued into the normally busy holiday season in 2014 as it added 2.1 million new connections to its ranks. It wasn’t T-Mobile’s best quarter of the year for subscriber growth – that would be its blockbuster Q1 – but it was a good way to cap off a very successful year.

Off the back of its evolving Uncarrier strategy, T-Mobile recruited 8.3 million net new subscribers to its ranks, the carrier revealed Wednesday ahead of its official earnings next announcement next month. In a single year T-Mobile grew its customer base by 18 percent, giving it a connection total of 55 million. At the end of Q3, Sprint had 55 million subscribers as well, so if Sprint continued its customer loss streak in Q4, T-Mobile will have assumed the mantle of the country’s third largest carrier.

T-Mobile’s gains weren’t all due to Uncarrier, though. It added 1.3 million net new postpaid customers and 266,000 net new prepaid subscribers in the quarter, but the remaining 586,000 links were comprised of wholesale connections from mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) like Ultra Mobile, Straight Talk and Target’s Brightspot, as well as from machine to machine connections linking the internet of things. Sprint used to be king of MVNOs, but T-Mobile has become much more aggressive in attracting virtual operator customers as of late.

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Wednesday, March 11, 2015
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