Mike Funk from Bank of America, head of the telecommunications, kind of, infrastructure, comm software group. You know, really grateful to have T-Mobile with us back again. Got John and Peter here with us today, and we should have a safe harbor. There we go, safe harbor agreement or statement up on the screen. Normal boilerplate, but please, please review. Guys, thank you again for coming out. This is great.
Thanks for having us.
Yes.
Yeah, outstanding. Look, and great, great timing. I saw you guys dropped an 8-K this morning, and some additional details, some updated forecasting around the USM deal. So can you walk through and broad brush that for any of us that did not get a chance to go through it in detail?
Yeah. We like to test you by putting it out right before-
Yeah
We speak. But, you know, it's a really exciting day for us. Obviously, the UScellular transaction closed, and what we put out there today is now that we've had some time and detail on this, we really feel all of the lessons that we've learned from Sprint and that integration can actually accelerate this one even more. So not only did we announce increased synergies, now $1.2 billion total expected run rate synergies, about $250 million of that is CapEx and the balance being OpEx, but we now believe we can get to that exit run rate synergy inside of two years.
Originally, the timeline was anticipated to be three to four, but everything we've learned to date, everything that we've gotten from the Sprint merger itself, and all of the expertise there, we're gonna apply all of that to, to UScellular. So we're tremendously excited about that. The other thing you saw us- is really just give some pinpoint Q3 guidance around, yeah, what do we anticipate the UScellular accretion to be to service revenue, Corey?
But, and of course, things like cost to achieve, as we're hitting the ground running on integration itself.
And maybe just a finer point on the, you know, what you learned from the Sprint deal and what gave you more confidence in raising that guidance. So specifically, learnings from the Sprint deal. Were there other deals you learned about USM recently as well that allowed you to increase that guidance range for the synergies?
Sure. I would say mainly two things. There's a lot on the edges, but two things in particular. One, applying, as you know, we have a very proprietary, what we call, customer-driven coverage model-
To how we build. Applying that same data, AI-infused methodology to what are the retained sites that are going to make the combined network experience even better for both T-Mobile customers as well as the UScellular customers joining us allowed us to say, "Well, the amount of cell sites that we actually need to retain, we can go faster," because we can do all the, what we call, MOCN and reverse MOCN and really make the day one experience for UScellular as well as T-Mobile customers better. That allows us to go faster towards decommissioning the sites that we don't need. The other one is really learning every lesson we had, and John was really the architect of all of this, around how do you treat new customers coming to you?
How do you give them, as quickly as you can, the same proposition of best value, best network, move them seamlessly through billing migration as quickly as possible, without being an irritant? So those are the two things that really, as we looked at it and had the detail and could get into the customer data post-close, that gave us the confidence to increase and accelerate those synergies.
No, it's outstanding. Thank you for the details, and giving me the cliff notes on the 8-K from this morning that's helpful for me as well. What I wanted to go back to talking about the business and the current environment. We are entering the busier, more promotional part of the year. We're gonna have iPhone launches coming up, and then holidays. Can you comment on how 3Q is shaping up? Let me just set the stage for one second. You know, my assessment, based on conversations that I have had, is that, you know, maybe the competitive intensity became a little bit less in 3Q, that promotions were more targeted in general across the industry, more rifle shot.
And so, you know, some of the factors that drove higher churn across the entire industry in the first half of the year maybe have, maybe have slackened. So, you know, in the context of what I just laid out, you know, from my research and my channel checks, can you comment on what you're seeing, what T-Mobile's seeing?
Yeah, maybe I'll start and hand it to John as well, and a little bit actually what we put into the press release this morning.
and expressed that the core business itself is actually performing even better than we anticipated, and allowed us to absorb the UScellular customers. And this is very much a repeat of, of what we saw-
At Sprint, where we're taking on a higher churning base that we'll take down as we introduce them to the best value, best network formula itself. But the core business is performing very strongly, and that allowed us to maintain the customer guidance for postpaid phones as well as total postpaid, while absorbing that UScellular higher churning base as well. If I think about, you know, what's happening in Q3 versus Q2, from a promotional perspective, it feels very similar to me, at least certainly for T-Mobile. Because what we do is very much target and create promotions that link our best device-centric offers, which is where, kind of, the industry is from a service device-centric promotionality perspective, to our top-tier rate plans. And that creates great customer lifetime values, which is what the primary driver of what we're focused on are.
And in that context, in Q2, you saw what we delivered, not only from a customer perspective, but how it translates into ARPA growth, how it translates into differentiated service revenue growth, now three times what our peers were able to deliver, and that's just Q2. That's something that continues on-
Quarter after quarter. And what we're seeing in Q3, you saw us express confidence at the earnings call, and we're seeing that same environment play through into Q3. That's what enabled us to really say the underlying core business is actually performing even better than what underpinned the guide at the Q2 earnings, and that's why we can absorb the UScellular base while still delivering what we're anticipating for the year. I don't know if, John, you have anything to add there. Sorry,
No, that was a great summary.
I'll get going.
Exactly, wind him up. That was a great summary. The thing that I would add is just dovetailing off of Peter's comments in terms of the strength in Q3 versus Q2, is this unique formula that we have at T-Mobile, the best network and the best experience. And that unique value, sure, there's promotions and overall demand generation in the market, and that changes from time to time. It might be a little bit more vibrant during the holiday periods, it might be a little bit more muted in other periods. But this unique value, this unique proposition, we think is shining through in a bigger way. You know, the announcement that we had on June 23rd was that we've been awarded as the best overall network in the United States.
And we've got a big campaign talking about that, as you guys have probably seen in some form of advertising with Billy Bob Thornton and the like.
You know, really talking about that. And we're seeing more and more people think about us and consider us based on our network strength. I mean, when you think about, like, the switchers that are out there, 20% of them believe that we have the best network. In other words, 80% of people don't believe that just yet, even though we do. And so there's this big gap between network reality and network perception, that we have a huge opportunity to close to continue to drive goodness in the overall marketplace, and that's a huge tailwind for us in our business, and we're seeing some of that play out here in Q3 as well.
I think that's such an important point, and that's when you see us express so much confidence in terms of.
On an earnings call or how we deliver the quarters that we do. Q2 was our highest ever Q2 for postpaid phone.
Yeah.
In the storied history of the Un-carrier and T-Mobile, it was the highest Q2. It was the highest total post-paid net additions, and it's very important. I know everybody gets focused on post-paid phone, and it's a very important category, but the other connected devices bring so much value accretion to the company as well. That's why we focus on both, and that's why we're so focused on ARPA. But this formula, it's not just promotions, as you say. Everybody can mirror and copy each other's promotions. The distinctiveness and what underpins our ability to deliver industry-leading results, multiples of what the others can do, is this place that we've arrived, of the best value and the best network.
The perception in our own base of the best network has dramatically risen over the last few years.
And yet that, coupled with the under-penetrated market segments that we have from the past, is what fuels so much optimism about the path forward from here for us.
Great, yeah, and the positivity is clear that you're laying out, linking back to the 2Q commentary, but then also today talking about even better performance during the quarter. So that's incredibly clear. I wanna put this all in the context just of the switching environment, though, in general, right? Because it's a market where, you know, relatively full penetration. We can debate how many industry net adds there are per year, and immigration, and second phones and everything, but switching's certainly up-
R ight, year over year. I'm hearing that, you know, switching up year over year in 3Q, maybe down a little bit versus 2Q, and but similar to 1Q levels, if that, if that all makes sense to you. So I guess, number one, do you, do you agree, you know, do you agree with that assessment? And, you know, with T-Mobile being maybe a net beneficiary of more people making choices, right, where do you think industry switching goes in the future, and what keeps that elevated, right?
That's created the opportunity-
Yeah
For you to grab those gross adds.
There's no doubt that switching is up in this industry on a year-over-year basis.
We see that as great news.
Yeah.
Now, we can play in either environment. We can play in a low-switching environment and make that environment very successful. We've proven that during some periods over the last five years. Or in this higher-switching environment, we actually like that better. Because to the point of your question, Mike, is that it presents more jump balls for us.
It presents more people to go and look and say, "Hey, am I getting the very best value? Am I getting the very best product? Am I getting the very best experience?" And it has people reconsidering those choices, and when they reconsider that choice, we're winning in the marketplace. So overall, switching volume is up. We like it that way. Where it actually goes from here, it's kind of hard to know. It's hard to predict, to the point, like, we don't really get into industry net add forecasting for all the reasons that you just said as well.
But when we look at our opportunity in terms of what's happened in the market, this unique proposition that we have, and what Peter was mentioning just a few moments ago, the under-penetrated segments, whether that be still more growth that we have in the top 100 markets, more growth than we have in smaller markets, rural areas, and then even more growth that we have in our business segment as well, huge tailwinds for us. So if this is an elevated switching environment, and there's a little bit higher churn across everybody, net-net, that's good for us because it's fueling our ongoing growth.
It's a great point to make. But I do wanna touch a little bit on immigration. I'm not gonna ask you to quantify the net adds in 2026, but you know, I've estimated maybe two to three million, you know, drag on subs from you know, immigration reform or changes. I could be right, I could be wrong. But have you seen the impact on your business?
Yeah.
If you haven't, do you think there could be a lag, and if not, why?
We haven't seen an impact in our business on immigration. This was one of the big question marks that was out there in terms of the immigration reform and the goals of the current administration and what they wanted to do. So we knew there was some speculation about this, and even we, you know, look and, you know, we're preparing for some potential impact, but we haven't seen an impact at all. One of the reasons, we believe, is that maybe in transactional prepaid spaces, so more kind of pay by the day, pay by the week, you know, pay by the month, you know, the lower value prepaid space, that might be more of an impact one. I'm not really sure. Those are kind of more other companies that have those kinds of brands.
Our overall portfolio from a prepaid perspective is focused on, you know, high-quality monthly customers, particularly flanked by our Metro by T-Mobile brand. We have Metro by T-Mobile, of course, we have Mint that has a multi-month payment option. We have a brand called Ultra. Those overall brands are solidifying us from any potential impact that's out there, and you can see it in our overall results in terms of what we've reported so far. We've seen no impact. The other thing, too, that I would point us and everyone to, is that when you looked at the huge immigration inflows of 2022 and 2023, we didn't see a big bump out of that, so there wasn't like all of this immigration that was coming through, whether legal or illegal, that was showing up in our prepaid results or our postpaid results. We didn't see that.
So therefore, if we didn't see that, we shouldn't have much of an impact as a result of that. Ongoing lags, I don't think so. I don't see any of that happening in terms of a lag, you know, some number of months from now, relative to immigration. I don't see it and don't feel it at all in the marketplace.
I do want to touch on spectrum because it's topical, given recent events. AT&T, EchoStar announced last week. So can you first comment on if you looked at the 600 and, you know, in the mid-band as well? If you did, you know, why you didn't execute on that? Then I have a few follow-ups, as well, some spectrum position and thoughts around it.
Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Anytime, you know, spectrum is potentially coming to market, we'll look at it. We'll look at it in the context, you know, if I back up around, does it complement our spectrum leadership position that we've translated with technology leadership, how we deploy into network leadership? And in this case, naturally, 600 is an area that we have heavily deployed.
You've already deployed 600.
Yeah, very heavily deployed. But, you also see us make strategic moves to center our spectrum strategy around what the core is, particularly in mid-band, around two and a half.
You saw us actually divest some of the three, four, five earlier. We looked at the spectrum. We understand it well. Obviously, it has some encumbrances in some areas, and so on the three, four, five, we weren't really an interested party, 'cause it doesn't align with our spectrum leadership position and strategy. On 600, what we always do, and this is true around any spectrum acquisition potential, whether we're going into an auction or a third party, we look at two things. We look at when you acquire more spectrum, you can perhaps get more coverage, and that allows you to go into areas that maybe you're not in today and generate demand, much like our smaller markets and rural areas playbook has generated. Or you can generate capacity, right? As data grows, you might need capacity growth.
That's how we look at any spectrum opportunity, and we look at it in the context of, can you buy it or can you build it, right? You can always densify, and obviously, that comes with CapEx and OpEx, and you have to think about what the cost of that is relative to just adding more spectrum bands on it. When we looked at 600, it was a question of, well, there isn't really very much incremental coverage, given how broadly we have 600 deployed nationwide. So it was a coverage... capacity, sorry, play for us. And then we looked at, well, what would it take to create incremental capacity on the low band, which remember-
I s predominantly a coverage play for us. Mid-band is where the vast majority of traffic is carried on our network.
Sure.
It didn't make sense from a relative value perspective. We're always gonna be tremendously disciplined in whether it's spectrum acquisitions or any other acquisition as a company, to make sure that we're creating value. That's how we approach this one as well.
Yeah, and, you know, so you've deployed 600, AT&T's deployed 700. Could be a win-win, do a spectrum swap. Why wouldn't that make sense for both of you?
Well, one, we also have our 700 broadly deployed in the network.
Yep.
It's a workhorse around our LTE, and is an area that you can always refarm into 5G.
Yep.
Any time there's an opportunity to swap spectrum, you've seen us actually swap spectrum with AT&T and Verizon to center around the bands again, whether it's low, mid, or millimeter wave, that make the most sense for us and our leadership positions. Of course, we'd be open to a discussion, but it's always gonna be, can you do it in the context of value creation? Especially considering we have both bands deployed as well.
Okay. Makes sense. So the, you know, price changes have been a large part of the discussion around wireless industry. I think in 3Q, you fully lapped some of the prices that were taken last year. You know, how should we think about lapping those, you know, impacting your subscriber base, the metrics, and then also ARPA growth, you know, the linkage there as well?
Maybe I'll begin with ARPA and can hand it to John around the rest. Remember, I think, also what we announced today is continued anticipation of at least 3.5%-
A RPA growth on the core business. Now, we've also acquired UScellular, and we have MetroNet customers, both that have come in at lower than T-Mobile ARPAs, which represent amazing opportunities for us to grow those relationships, much like we did in past acquisitions. But the underlying core business, we see continued strength and are expecting at least 3.5% ARPA growth on a full-year-to-full-year basis. I think what you're speaking about is what we call out in Q2, which is, of course, when you have moments of rate plan optimizations, it's a manifestation of what just when do you do it, and how does it impact year-over-year metrics?
Yeah.
But we're focused on ARPA growth, with the predominance of our ARPA growth being focused on customers self-selecting up rate plans-
Because of the value that's created there, or deepening their relationship with other connected devices and/or other lines in the, in the relationship from a postpaid phone perspective. So continued strength there, and it really, you know, everything's firing on all cylinders. But anything else from a net adds perspective, or?
I would just reinforce what Peter said. The orientation for us is to not do pricing optimizations. We had to take a couple of those moves. One that we started last year, you know, concluded at the beginning of this year, and those were old legacy plans, of course. But the orientation of our company is to unlock value through switching, deepening relationships, packing our most premium plans full of value, and encouraging customers to self-select up that rate card.
Understood. But, John, is your assessment, though, that the customer is more price-sensitive today than they were 12 months ago? Because I'm hearing that from others, that just, you know, the elasticity of demand might be higher today than it was 12 or 24 months ago. Or are you not seeing that because, you know, your playbook, to your point, is more about delivering value, and so the customer isn't necessarily perceiving it as a price increase, it's more of an enhanced product? So just, it-
Yeah.
A bit of a nuance-
Yeah . But I'm just trying to draw the line between comments I'm hearing from others versus what I'm hearing from you today.
Are some customers demanding more value than ever for.
Y ou know, value being what you get for the price you pay? Sure, they are, and that's why we're winning so much. When you look at our Experience Beyond plan, our most premium plan, versus the previous, previous plan, previous premium plan, with Go5G Next on our previous lineup, we're up 2X as a percentage basis of the take rate of the most premium plan. And that's not customers being price-sensitive. That's customers that are craving value and wanting even more value. So when you think about all of the streaming services that we pack into those plans, whether that be Netflix or Hulu, some of the in-flight Wi-Fi services that we provide, you know, people that are traveling on planes, you can get the entire Wi-Fi, the entire flight on Wi-Fi for free from us.
Other perks, like DashPass, that we just introduced, you know, when we made this network announcement back on June 23rd. All of these services that customers find real utility for in their daily lives, that they can get either for free or at a steep discount as a result of a premium plan, they are loving that. And our orientation is to pack more value and to really be great stewards of the overall value proposition across every single point of the lineup, but particularly at the highest end of the lineup, and encourage customers to adopt those premium plans.
I think, why you're perhaps hearing a difference from us relative
T o the competition on this is all centered around our strategy. We've long been known as the customer value leader.
That's really what drove the growth during, particularly, the 2013, as you look to the initial merger years.
Sure
A t this company. We've arrived at the place of having the best value and the best network, which creates tremendous tailwinds into the future. But we're never gonna leave our maniacal focus on customers and the customer value leadership. That's why we're not focused on, "Hey, it's a price increase after a price increase after a price increase." Let's pack more value into the plans. One, we have a different front-book, back-book dynamic than anybody else in this industry because of how we've built up the customer value leadership, our NPS position. But two, it's that combination of value leadership and network leadership, that P and Q combination that we have so magically nailed here, is what drives our ability to outperform the entire industry on customer net additions, on account.
n et additions, real switching relationships, you know, coming over to T-Mobile, and most importantly, our ability to translate that into service revenue. And when you look at, once again, at Q2, if you look at, you know, in this case, you're really focused on postpaid.
Yeah, of course.
Postpaid service revenue was three times the growth of AT&T and Verizon, and that wasn't a manifestation of one quarter. That's been quarter after quarter after quarter, service revenue leadership. And of course, we can also differentially translate that into profitability and have the highest conversion of that service revenue into free cash flow. But it's the thing. On the edges, are there very legacy rate plans that we had to address? Yes, we did that, and there's probably, you know, those are things we'll look at on the edges. But the lens is, how do we maintain customer value leadership that, paired with network leadership, can continue this machine into a long-run, you know, industry outperformer?
I wanna move to strategic for a second. You and you've had a lot of announcements recently. I'm not gonna be able to touch on all of them, but one was the cable MVNO, right? And you know, targeted up to, what, you know, 1,000 or 999 employee businesses. We all know that the Verizon deal was for 20 or fewer employee businesses. We also all know that AT&T and Verizon had much higher market share of enterprise and business customers, and T-Mobile was given the legacy business. So I mean, was this, you know, purely Machiavellian, where, you know, you're being chased by a bear in the woods, and you tripped your two other friends, so cable focuses on them? Or was there kind of a standalone business rationale, where you're like, "You know what?
We just can't really serve this market as well. We don't want to serve this market as well. We, T-Mobile, we wanna be the larger enterprise, you know, provider with 5G," you know, the functionality you put in your advertisement, and that was the standalone rationale? So just, help me with that, you know, conspiracy theory or, you know, standalone business case.
Completely a standalone business case.
Oh, I like the.
Actually
Conspiracy theory so much more.
I wish I could give you something, but I can't. It's really-
Yeah
It actually represents our long-held and even externally discussed strategy with respect to MVNOs, and that is, look at areas where MVNO partners could create more value for us than ourselves because they may have unique customer segments or distribution that we should leverage, and we shouldn't build.... And yes, so in this case, you know, on, to your point, on the Metro side, less than twenty, they've, Cable's already been playing in this for years and years and years. And actually, it was the impetus as a tangent to some of the moves we recently made, because Metro and consumer behave very similarly. You should think about the propositions, you know, complementary to each other.
Much of it is already serviced through retail, and so that's why it made sense to consolidate that all under, you know, John's leadership, where he's done a fabulous job on consumer, and frankly, done most of the Micro, T-Fiber through there anyway. And then on the enterprise, the over one thousand piece, the enterprise segment, we believe we have a disproportionate right to win because of our disproportionate network capabilities. And these are the companies that test. They want more than just, "Here's a postpaid phone at the same or maybe slightly higher cost because we have a better network." They want solutions, and our network is the one that can bring it because of our technology, leadership, and spectrum position. So that's why it made sense on those two ends.
In the middle, Cable has, you know, a great distribution play and relationships into that market, and we said, "Well, that is very much aligned with our strategy for MVNOs, so it makes sense to have a relationship there." And we believe that's, you know, all of this is gonna be slightly accretive to the business. This isn't some sort of, wow, big game changer.
None of that. It's slightly accretive to the business over time. Let's leverage their distribution. We can actually generate higher CLVs for app, for us doing that, and let's focus in micro and enterprise, where we have the right to win.
Okay, makes a lot of sense to me. I'm gonna stick with my pitch, though when I do client meetings. It's much more interesting. The free line's been a discussion for years at T-Mobile. It's not new, but help me think about the success rate of migrating free to paid lines over time, and I don't know how much you can give me around that, but it'd be hugely helpful.
Yeah.
If I can frame that.
Yeah. I think, when this question comes up, it's almost always people are trying to get at the quality of the customer base.
Exactly.
Yeah, right at the quality of the customer base, and a few things that I would point out: One is, Peter mentioned this just a few moments ago, our highest post-paid service revenue increase in the last, like, 9%, right? And incredible. Our highest post-paid ARPA increase in the last eight years. Net account addition, so the real barometer of what's happening with switching in the marketplace, net accounts accelerating on a year-over-year basis. The overall quality of this customer base is fantastic. We don't use that tool as an acquisition offer at all. We use the tool more as a retention offer, and we use it very, very. It's one of the tools in the toolbox. We use it very targeted, very selectively, to help customers.
If we can get a customer that might be taking an entire account away, to rethink that decision and stay perhaps one, two, three, maybe even some number of years longer than that, as a result of a free line, that's great for us, and the overall CLV contribution of retaining that account is fantastic. Then, of course, we have an opportunity to further differentiate and deepen that relationship, too, with other products and services and get more and more adoption from things beyond the smartphone, whether that be tablets or watches or, you know, fixed wireless with our 5G home broadband. So we really love this tool. It's one tool.
We use it very targeted, very selectively, as an overall retention tool, while at the same time, when you pan back and zoom out and survey the overall customer base and the health of our customer base, man, we are, we are feeling really, really great about the health of our customer base and where we're going.
Okay, that's helpful, thinking about it that way. And you actually reminded me of a topic that I didn't want to skip, and so I'm gonna drag you down the AI hole for a second, okay? And I don't think AI is discussed enough in telecom, honestly. You know, you may know, I spent the last five years covering software after covering telecom for the first twenty years of my career, so I've kind of been deep in that, deep in that well for the last several years. And, you know, my idea is that industries, companies that have, you know, really deep customer data, right?
A lot of customer touch points and relationship, and then also have this kind of domain expertise, or understanding their business extremely well, unlike anyone else, are best positioned to really harvest and utilize AI to enhance their business, right? From a customer, you know, retention perspective, and even to drive revenue growth. So, you know, can you explain to me, you know, what T-Mobile's doing, whether it's, you know, utilizing, you know, CDPs, customer data platforms, and all those touch points to your customers and very, you know, specific demographic data to kind of feed into an AI engine to improve that customer retention you just talked about, and/or more targeted offers to take them up that customer lifetime value through pricing. What, what are you doing?
Yeah. There's a variety of things we're doing.
Yeah.
We've talked about this at our capital markets day when we, you know, talked about our new partnership with OpenAI and what we're doing with IntentCX.
Yeah.
We're still the very early beginnings of all of the opportunities in this space. But you said it just a few moments ago, in terms of the plethora of data that we have, whether that be our network data, billing data, and customer interaction data, at T-Mobile, those data lakes really kind of never met one another. And so what we've been doing is doing a lot of work to get that data to meet one another and put AI on top of that, to get real insights to improve the overall customer experience. We see this as a big opportunity to improve that overall customer experience. And what we've been doing is reorienting our team, particularly our customer care team, of not being proud to solve a problem, but being proud to prevent a problem as a result of all of this emerging technology.
And so that's a big part of what we're doing. We're in the early innings of our IntentCX platform, our partnership with OpenAI, lots of interesting things that's happening in that space. And then also the AI that we're doing to drive our customer-driven coverage. Peter mentioned this just a few moments ago in terms of customer-driven coverage in the AI capabilities that you can deploy in the network. Whether this is gonna manifest itself in more automation, more intelligence, you know, so much opportunity in front of us.
But we see this, a lot of companies talk about AI in terms of like, "Hey, how do I take a bunch of costs out of the business?" And sure, there's gonna be some operating efficiencies as a result of AI, but we see AI as an application to be able to enhance the customer experience. If you can take the world's best people with the world's best technology and marry those things together, I think there's something really powerful there that few companies are talking about.
Okay. Look forward to hearing more then, I guess, over the next several quarters and year on progress that you're seeing there. You know, I probably have time for a few more, so, you know, I don't wanna skip over asking about, you know, MetroNet, Lumos now closed. Are there any early learnings post-close? I know you always learn something once you kind of, you know, really get into the books, and you start opening things up. So what have you learned post-close?
Well, I'd say a couple things. One, we're very excited and only validated that we picked the right partners. You know, if you look at.
Yep
MetroNet in this case, the largest greenfield fiber builder in the country. It's a very exciting thing to be able to partner with people who are experts in that space and take that ability to build fiber like nobody else in the greenfield fiber space and couple it with the strengths that we bring from a customer relationship, distribution, all of that platform, and start really launching this thing. We launched T-Fiber earlier in the year. We're very confident now that the guide that we gave you, where already this year we anticipate 100,000 net additions coming from fiber.
Okay.
That's embedded in our guide. That's going to come to fruition, so everything is off and running. We're very, you know, excited about this space and bringing the T-Mobile magic to it, and that's probably it.
Okay, great. I don't wanna forget to ask, there have been press reports that seem relatively credible, about Mike retiring. So can you guys, you know, please update us, comment on those press reports?
Yeah, I'm probably gonna be remarkably uninsightful here. 'Cause obviously, you know, any sort of succession plan and decisions around that is going to be for Mike and the board to make. But maybe what I can add from my perspective is, I really don't sweat this at all. It's not something that is, in my mind, concerning. I think John is in the same place, the entire leadership team. Because the few things we have said, and Mike has said very transparently, look, a company, a great, successful company, has to have great, thoughtful, long-term succession plans. And Mike said, Srini is definitely the succession plan for himself.
Right? And it makes a lot of sense. He has not only deep expertise in digitalization and other industries, as well as telco, fiber, that make a lot of sense for accelerating the benefits and the transformation that we talked about at Capital Markets Day, but also, he has deep experience with T-Mobile itself. Years and years and years, not only on the board, but obviously now as COO, helping us develop and shape the strategy. And, you know, for now, the entire year, we've been, jointly with Mike and Srini leading us to just tremendous success, and you saw our enthusiasm here around Q3 in and of itself and UScellular and all of that. So, you know, any company's gonna do the right thing from a succession perspective.
I know Mike personally. Whenever that decision gets made, he's going to make sure that this company is in the hands of somebody who's gonna take the Un-carrier spirit and accelerate it. And so those are kind of the reasons that I'm not sweating this, and I don't know, John, you know, none of us are.
The same, same. You know, we feel that the brightest days of this company are in front of us versus behind us. I mean, I personally have been a part of this organization for 30 years, 31. 31 years, and most of that 31 years has been kind of scraping and clawing and trying to fight with this inferior network position. And like, you know, subscale, inferior network, inferior set of assets, and now when you think about where we are and from a position of extraordinary strength and what we can do over the next several years with this incredible management team, something that I don't sweat.
I feel unbelievably great about where we are, where we're going, the opportunities in front of us, the overall plan that we laid out in our Capital Markets Day, and our ability to go and execute that plan. We've never been in a stronger position than we are right now.
Understood. Investors should get comfortable with the idea that if there were a management team, deep management bench, succession plan already in place, nothing changes operationally, strategically.
That's right.
That's
You've got. You know, when that time comes-
That's the bullet point.
Like we said, Srini-
If and when.
Yeah.
Yeah. If and when.
If and when it comes, because Mike's been clear, this is the.
Yeah
S uccession plan, it's going to be because you've got the right person. You're coming at a time of tremendous success of the company, and you leave it in the right hands, so that's, that's why, again, why I don't, I don't sweat when that decision ultimately is made.
Okay, last question would be, fixed wireless access. It's part of the AT&T EchoStar deal. AT&T obviously announced more aggressive posture on FWA. One interpretation could be that it, you know, seems to, you know, justify or certainly validate the strategy you've taken from FWA. But, you know, how do you feel about that space getting more crowded, right? With AT&T leaning in more, Verizon working on an MDU solution. It's a space you've obviously done very well in, but now there's a lot more competition. So how do you feel about that expanded competitive environment?
We feel great about this space. I mean, remember, our strategy is perhaps a little bit different than their stated strategy, which is utilization of fallow capacity. So a tremendously high-margin business, and also one that helps you utilize your spectrum much more efficiently, and you know, when you look at the success of this business, couple things come to mind. One is just what's it done over the last couple years? There's always been a question, it's funny to watch competitors kind of follow our lead of, you know, especially when you look at them, it's, "Well, it's not a thing. Oh, maybe it's a little bit of a thing." Now I'm ready to deploy apparently 23 billion of spectrum against it, 'cause it's really a thing, which is what we've been saying all along.
When you look at the last two years of our own trajectory, that really proves this and why we're so excited about the space and on our way to our much increased 12 million subscriber goal by the end of 2028. In the last two years in this space, because of how we approach it from a really deeply data-informed fallow capacity model, you've doubled the subscriber base for T-Mobile. You've seen each subscriber utilize 20% more data, now just slightly over 560 gigabytes a month, exactly in line with our projections of where this is gonna go. And yet you've seen speeds increase 50%. That's the magic, right? This isn't a static technology and platform. Wireless technology is constantly evolving, whether that's the CPE itself, whether that's at the radio access network in the core, all of our technology leadership is making this a better and better product.
Now, the net adds obviously tell you that's the truth, but the other place I always go to, instead of all of us crowing, is: What is the customer telling us from an NPS perspective? T-Mobile's fixed wireless NPS, the latest one as of Q2, is higher than any other category of. T ake that, not just cable, any other category.
That over 50, you know, a 50 NPS score on this, that tells you that this is a durable product that customers love, that's going to be here for the long term, and that's why it makes us excited about our continued aspirations of hitting that goal.
That's a great place to end, and look forward to hearing more very soon from you guys and connecting as well. So Peter, John, thank you so much for coming out, and thank you all for attending.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.