All right. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us, for this afternoon's session with T-Mobile. Thank you to those of you who are joining us on the web as well for MoffettNathanson's 13th annual media and communications conference. I'm delighted to welcome, Peter back to our conference. This is T-Mobile's 12th appearance in 13 years-
Wow.
At our conference. You know, if I, if I think back on those years, it's really been an impressive journey, I think, from upstart to challenger in those days to, in many ways, the industry's leader. We, we've got a lot to talk about today, convergence, FWA, satellite. We're gonna get to all of those. Just because it is so topical, and with Deutsche Telekom having reported earnings and spoken this morning, I wanna start with the reports in the news that have over the last weeks about the possibility of corporate activity between you and T-Mobile. Between you and Deutsche Telekom, and make sure I understand the corporate governance aspects of that protect the shareholders here in the U.S.
Awesome. Well, by the way, thanks for having us again.
Yeah.
It's always a pleasure. I know we had our safe harbor statement up there, always point you to that. I'll be making forward-looking statements and, of course, non-GAAP measures. Yeah, let me start there. Really, I just don't have a lot to add to what speculation and the hypothetical transaction out there. There have been a lot of inbounds around, okay, if a hypothetical transaction happened, what's the governance around it? As a result of those inbounds, you know, our interpretation of Delaware law is that any such hypothetical transaction would require a, what's termed the majority-of-the-minority or the majority of disinterested shareholders. Because of the volume of inbounds on that, we have confirmed that, and DT has confirmed that to us, as well as the independent directors on our board have confirmed that to us.
That's really the governance structure. You know, that's obviously important for people. As I said, it's a hypothetical speculative transaction. Honestly, we're spending all our time focused on the business and driving the differentiation and the growth there. Happy to get that out of the way, there's just not much more for me to say on the speculation.
Understood. Okay. Now let's dig into the business. We upgraded your stock to buy again back in April after a couple of years actually on the sideline, in part because we had updated an analysis on geographic cohorts. While we actually talked about that in the context of the rural cohorts, I think the most impressive part was that you're back to, at least by our numbers, seeing accelerating share gains in the urban top 100 markets where you were already the market share leader. Talk about that, if you would. Geography is only one way to slice it. There are all kinds of demographics or psychographics or that sort of thing.
What are the market segments that are driving that re-acceleration in the top 100 markets, and what kind of legs does it have in your mind?
Yeah. You're right. Really, we're seeing growth across the board, whether that's in smaller markets in rural areas or the top 100 markets. We tend to segment even within the top 100 markets we've long talked about. There's really three main cohorts that we look at just from geographies, that is the ones where we are a market share leader, including sitting here in N.Y., where we're over 50% market share and continuing to grow, then more cohorts that behave similarly to our smaller markets in rural areas. It's really, whether you look at subsegments, demographics, geography, in reality, we tend to distill this down to three simple things, it's what people care about, that is, "Can I get what I deem is the best network or a very reliable network?
Can I get the best value? I want really great experiences. As you know, you talked about the arc of, you know, we've been here for 12 years and the growth of T-Mobile, and it really started with focusing, of course, on the value side of the equation and the experience side of the equation. With the merger with Sprint and our ability to then unlock the 2.5 GHz spectrum, it's now taken us to a place where really any real objective third-party measure out there that's based on real customer use, real device use, I mean, puts us as the best network. That's a cohort of customers that in the past we simply couldn't attract, right? It was really growth based on value and experience.
What we saw, in fact, in Q1, we just had the highest ever share in terms of new accounts that came to T-Mobile. It was our highest ever share of those accounts that came in saying that they're choosing us for network. The, you know, the word of mouth and the ability for consumer perception to catch up with where the network actually is is starting to happen, and that's certainly helping to drive a whole new set of opportunity for us. We talked about it as, at a minimum, 20 million families and businesses that we call network seekers. While all elements of that equation are important to them, the most important to them is the network quality, and that's one that is certainly starting to drive more and more significant growth in the top 100 markets.
That's how even in markets like New York, we can continue to grow. It's fabulous.
Are there others that come to mind? That's a psychographic segmentation, if you will, of the network seekers as you described it.
Yeah.
As I think about whether it's demographics, whether it's income levels, whether it's ethnicity, are there other segments that you say, "Here's somewhere where we see a significant growth opportunity that we're just leaning into?
Well, a lot of them are intertwined, right? To your point, you know, network seekers tend to be higher prime customers, and as we see, in fact, we had more in terms of additions and new accounts coming in to T-Mobile that were more prime than we had on an absolute basis than we did last year. That comes, you know, part and parcel with network seekers. It's growth across all the segments, and you see that in smaller markets and rural areas as well. There's plenty of customers who place value first. Many of them, by the way, when you go through analysis and do customer surveys, you know, we in the industry use jargon like, well, is it coverage? Is it reliability? Is it value?
A lot of times customers put those all together and say, "Well, value is what I pay for what I get." It's really hard to discern every single demographic and saying what is specifically motivating them. We're seeing growth across all of it, whether it's, you know, social segments, whether it's age demographics, or across geographies. By the way, you don't need any more fiber. I heard you might need more fiber today. You don't need any more fiber. You're looking great.
You know, and that is because, again, it does distill down, it's way more complex, of course, in how we approach it, but it distills down to you even jokingly said in the past, "Well, if you have the best product at the best price with the best experience, shouldn't your market share be 100%?
Yeah.
You know, I don't think we're quite that ambitious, but we certainly have a lot of ambition, and there's a lot of room to run when that's the formula.
Well, so in the non-urban cohorts, I think I wrote my first piece about the rural opportunity for you guys 10 years ago now.
Yeah.
What inning are we in? That's been a story that I think people understand pretty well, but it's not over yet.
Yeah. To me, I feel it's still early innings. While we're at 24% market share, that includes the acquisition of UScellular, I mean, we see continued growth and runway there. It is because we're finally bringing this equation there. There wasn't a lot of investment in many of those smaller markets and rural areas in terms of network, and there certainly wasn't that much investment in terms of customer value, 'cause that was a place where maybe only one of the two were playing, and so there wouldn't be a great balance for consumers of what you get for what you pay, and our ability to unlock that. Remember, we're doing it in a very, very smart way. You know, we had about 4,000 greenfield site builds last year.
A lot of them were in smaller markets and rural areas, but all driven by our, what we call our proprietary customer-driven coverage model, which is really looking at where do consumers really use and need the network. That's not a pops coverage-driven model. It is really where are consumers going, points of interest, critical roads. That becomes even more important in a smaller market, a rural area, where, you know, it's something that maybe a lot of people don't live there, but it's an interconnecting road that's tremendously important, and you cover that. Our really efficient capital approach finds those areas, covers them, does the build, and the word of mouth is just growing. I think there's a lot of opportunity because of the formula there.
Yeah. It's interesting to see you really leaning into that now. If I think about your Billy Bob Thornton advertising, for example, which is sort of aimed at those low density markets. Is that sort of same question I asked about urban, is there something different that those customers are looking for versus urban customers? Is it more coverage rather than value, price value? Is it price value more than coverage? What are the attributes that drive success in those markets?
It's not dramatically different, you know, than the top 100 markets. You have a group of network seekers. You have value seekers. I think what consumers are really looking for that they were hungry for for a long time, you know, and it's again, if you go to an average consumer and do a survey, you know, whether you ask about, well, is it reliability or coverage or speeds, they see their network experience as a network experience, and they may consider, "Well, if it works where I need it to work at the speeds I need it to, that's what I define as reliable." We kinda take all of them with a grain of salt and focus on all of the network-related consumer sentiments and driving those up.
I think it absolutely is. I want this network to work for me where I need it, and I wanna pay a fair price for it and great value and get great experience. That's, it's just I know it sounds really simple, but when you know, when you have competitors who don't focus on the equation, it's, yeah.
Is that why you leaned into T-Satellite and the satellite opportunity earlier than, and more, more forcefully, I guess, than your competitors was it part and parcel of that coverage value proposition for rural customers, or was it more urban customers just as likely to go traveling in Yosemite and is gonna want it or?
Yeah.
How did it d-?
Yeah.
Was that a part of that rural-urban skew in your mind?
Yeah, no, what it really was is, this is part of the DNA of who we are, which is let's work together to co-develop something new for consumers, and their benefit. We co-developed this with SpaceX. We're very proud to put it out there. You know, we always, much like with a lot of other, of the innovations that we bring to market, always expect that ultimately those go to the broader consumer marketplace. We expect that our exclusivity will end. We always anticipated that. I think we spoke about in the Q1 earnings that really what we've seen as a part of T-Satellite is that it's a great complementary service for consumers.
It is relatively low usage and concentrated around areas like national parks, as you might suspect, and plus probably a testament to just the strength of the terrestrial network that we have. Again, this customer-driven coverage model, which covers a lot of those places where it's important for consumers. That wasn't really the thought process of, oh, we're targeting smaller markets and rural areas or top 100 markets. It was, let's drive another consumer innovation into the marketplace, and others will ultimately follow. You know, now you're seeing Amazon and Globalstar and that announced transaction, and this is a perfect time to have more competition in this complementary, you know, important but very low usage and kind of geographically contained.
I was going to say, have there been any surprises in that? There was early on, I think there was a big debate about is this going to be a meaningful driver of brand choice? Is it instead going to be a separate subscription service? Is it instead going to be a way to uplift people into premium plans? It seems like it's coalescing into that last, the last of those three primarily. Is that right?
Well, there's a tremendous amount of things that are embedded in our, you know, higher tier plans that have consumers self-select up there. This is just one of the elements of value. I think what we've ultimately found, because again, because of the usage characteristics, it's complementary, good, and, you know, limited to primarily areas like national parks. As a result, it really hasn't driven a lot of à la carte purchasing of the service themselves. I think of it as, well, just another part of the value equation that consumers can see, and maybe it helps on the margins with self-selection up the rate plans. There's just so much other incredible value that drives consumers up those rate plans. Again, I think it's a great complementary product, and we as T-Mobile is onto the next thing.
I wanna close the book on this topic. I imagine this is probably very top of mind for a lot of people in the room, and that is, are the LEO satellite services competitors or are they complements?
They're absolutely complements, and that's why we're excited that, you know, Amazon and Globalstar partnership is getting in there. You have AST getting in there. I think They'll have a great competitive set there for the complementary service. When you step back and think about, for example, what makes our network now the best network relative to a Verizon or AT&T, and you think about, well, how does that compare to what a LEO satellite can do, and I know there's been a lot of talk about, well, in-building characteristics and the inability of satellite to cover that.
Just if you step back and think about we have 400 MHz of, you know, mid and low-band spectrum deployed across 85,000 sites and, like, 57,000 at last count small cells, coupled with, you know, the Dr. Saw magic of continuing technology advancement, that's a I mean, that's a massive build and a massive terrestrial network. We don't see this as, really a competitor, but more as a complement.
I'll put you on a spot. I got a very clear and decisive answer from your competitor this morning. Is there a scenario where you would give an MVNO agreement to a LEO satellite operator?
Yeah, I mean, we've answered that before, and Srini has, where we're just not seeing the pattern match between what makes us think about what could be a good MVNO partner, and that's usually attracting certain specific demographics or segments or some sub-segment of the consumer base or business base that we don't have an advantaged ability to go get after. You know, you just don't see a pattern match between the satellite constellations and that. It generally doesn't seem to fit.
If I was Jim Carrey, I would say, "So you're saying there's a chance.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'd say the opposite.
The business opportunity has always gone hand-in-hand.
Yeah.
The rural opportunity. Let me ask the same question about the business opportunity. What inning are we in the business opportunity?
We're in early innings of the business opportunity. Remember we laid out at our capital markets day update we're expecting double-digit revenue growth from the business opportunity. I think we're well on our way. It's really driven off the fact You mentioned innings, so I'll have to, you know, tout our Automated Ball-Strike System.
That's right. That's yours.
That's ours.
Yes. That's right.
Yeah, it's T-Mobile for Business.
There's a lot of baseball fans. Thank you for that.
A lot of baseball fans.
I'm one of them, by the way. It makes it much better.
Hopefully you don't hate the automated system. You know.
It's so much better. It's really good. Yeah.
It's pretty cool. What really drives the business opportunity more so than because it's not just, let's go duke it out over phones and tell CIOs that we have a better network, and you should replace all of the phones in your business base. It starts with, and where we're heavily advantaged on this, is what is the problem we're trying to solve for you? What's a real business problem that we can help you solve? The other stuff comes. The phone business comes. When you think about Automated Ball-Strike or what we just did with the PGA, you know, they'd have to go out to a tournament, like string miles and miles of lines everywhere, and then you have static locations based on those. Now you have 5G enabled broadcast. They can run around, you know.
Like, it just enables a different solution for them, much more simple, but also enhances the experience. The other business come. We talked about underwing operations at airlines, that we've been able to replace Wi-Fi. It's really the innovation where we're uniquely, because of the technology advancement on the network, uniquely qualified to solve, that is also driving then the other aspects of the business. That's larger enterprises and government, but also in like the midsize space where we just introduced SuperBroadband. You know, taking away the complexity, especially at a midsize business that doesn't have massive IT departments to go manage ISPs and all that. Like, here it is, a combined solution. It's a T-Mobile innovation, plug and play with two connections. You don't have to manage it. It's solving a real problem that they have.
Then, you know, the phone business comes too.
I wanna turn my attention to convergence. Your new financial reporting structure emphasizes convergence really clearly. It focuses exclusively, or almost exclusively on postpaid accounts, which include both fiber and FWA as well as wireless, rather than subscribers. Talk about that. Is the new intent of the reporting structure to emphasize convergence, or is it some dissatisfaction with the way the industry is reporting sub numbers?
No.
To the point where sub numbers are just not viewed as meaningful anymore?
Well, you know, it's not emphasis on convergence, by the way, we've long been reporting accounts in ARPA. It is really trying to align. What we saw out there in the industry, and what we saw even in Q1, which was so funny to me, is, you know, you really see a misalignment, particularly when you have a hyper-focus on lines. You even noted this with one of our competitors on how do you gain so many lines and lose a bunch of accounts? Well, consumers don't think about their relationship with a, you know, a T-Mobile or our competitive set as I have seven different lines, you know, for example. They think about the relationship in an account basis. That's how they choose to switch their entire relationship.
That's where they choose to add, it's not just fiber and broadband, it's all sorts of other connected devices, of course, multiple phone lines where we've been so successful, and family bundles in the U.S., and us in particular. It really is not only the way consumers buy, it's most directly translating to, am I actually creating value instead of, you know, losing accounts, growing lines? I mean, if you look, I kind of had fun with this at our earnings call, but, you know, you saw what we delivered from a Q1 year-over-year perspective on service revenue, EBITDA, free cash flow margin. Those are the value-creating things that everybody should be looking at.
When you hyper-focus on just lines and you're losing accounts, well, suddenly you had like a Verizon when you adjust Frontier out that was down service revenue year-over-year. You have AT&T where if you take out that massive contract asset increase, you had EBITDA down year-over-year. You had the highest churn increase. To us, it's, let's focus on accounts. ARPA directly translates the best into post-paid service revenue creation and value creation. It mirrors how customers buy. It's not some sort of convergence thing. If anything, it's a bundling thing because that's how consumers think.
I'll take your argument that it's not about convergence, and that your focus is not by putting wireless and wireline and FWA together, it's not a convergence signal, if you will.
Yeah.
You've called convergence a myth, and yet you've also talked about the opportunity to pick up additional fiber assets if the opportunity arises. How do I reconcile those two things? If there's really a benefit to be had by using the T-Mobile brand, and attaching it to fiber, either because T-Mobile wireless helps sell fiber or vice versa, isn't that convergence?
Yeah. Well, I think we've long been clear on our position on convergence, which by the way, has been in the run rate of the industry for, like, over five years now, and you can see our results, is that it is for us not about, well, we need some sort of bundle, because that's all it is, bundle of wireline and wireless to be able to effectively compete. You know, as we step back, you say, well, you as a consumer don't get any benefit, no functional benefit from merging wireline and wireless. Used to be maybe long ago, you wouldn't have to write two checks, you know, the vast majority of consumers are on auto pay. They're not thinking about writing paper checks. You don't get a functional benefit from it. What is it then?
Well, it's a bundle and an ability, in many cases, to get a discount. For us, it isn't about, well, we have to have that to play effectively in the competitive dynamics because that's how consumers want to buy. Consumers aren't wanting to buy that way. They have considered purchases around both. Mobile is the much more considered purchase because of the mobility aspects of it and how it needs to work for consumers. By the way, you saw us lead in broadband growth as well as, you know, mobile growth once again in Q1. That doesn't mean that there isn't a great ability to make money, you know, and bring value to TMUS by hand selecting whether it's 5G broadband or certain fiber pure play.
Remember, we don't have legacy assets we need to defend or try to overbuild and then sell a story around. We're looking at where can the brand, consumer relationships, the experience, all that focus and simplicity actually create value by taking on certain specific fiber providers. 5G broadband is a, you know, a big cornerstone for our broadband strategy as well, but it isn't some sort of mythical, well, we need convergence. By the way, if you believe in scale, if you believe, well, you need scale in this place, but we're gonna have 18 million-19 million customers between 5G broadband and fiber to the home, excluding the 2 deals we just recently announced. That's a lot of scale. Yeah.
I'm gonna come back to the 5G broadband in a second, but I'm gonna just hit this topic one last time because I know it's a question that I get more than any other question probably about you. I suspect you do too, and that is as emphatic as Srini was on the conference call about we are not interested in cable, I get the question constantly, and I suspect it comes from a place of saying, "Okay, but cable is the only scaled alternative to having a wireline footprint." There are clearly investors out there who believe that there is a need for a wireline, or at least there's a scenario where there's a need for a wireline footprint. Is FWA a fully sufficient alternative to that and indefinitely, permanently?
Yeah.
A solution?
Well, we certainly see it that way. In fact, obviously, we have the confidence to just increase our guide with respect to 5G broadband up to 15 million subscribers. What's most impressive. Remember, this is a technology set that's rapidly evolving. When we just do an arc of two years, we've increased our customers dramatically. They've increased usage according to what we expected, and yet our speeds on fixed wireless have increased by 50%. By the way, they're also 50% faster than the next fixed wireless competitor that we have. What's really cool is when you look at our latest generation routers, our latest gen CPE, which are obviously the best tech at the moment from a CPE perspective that rapidly evolves. Be able to harness the best tech that we have in the network.
You have actual lived over Wi-Fi download speeds of near 400 Mb a second. That's over Wi-Fi. Take away the, you know, the marketing spin of fiber, which is okay if I plug my Ethernet cord directly in. When you look at what fiber lived experience over Wi-Fi is, it's right there. This is something that's increased by 50% in two years on a rapidly evolving technology. To us, you know, 5G broadband is a durable long-term technology, especially the way we approach it with fallow capacity, and it's a smart way to monetize all that excess capacity that you have. It's rapidly improving, and by the way, has the highest NPS scores of any category, even above fiber.
Why is AT&T still reasonably new to that category?
Yeah.
I'll leave them out for a second. Verizon is seeing, I think, I think it's at least 10 straight quarters of decelerating growth. You haven't. You've actually started to re-accelerate a bit. What's driving, is it directly versus Verizon and that you're competing better against Verizon, or is there something different that's making the re-acceleration for you look so different than what Verizon is experiencing?
You know, in terms of where we're getting our share on 5G broadband, the majority is still cable. When you step back and say, "Well, why is it different than Verizon?" Maybe my answer would be, well, it's the same as why is it different on mobile, where we're hyper-focused on we're driving the best product. I can't speak as to, you know, how obviously they do their selections, but we have the best and most advanced network with the best spectrum, the densest grid, and we have Dr. Saw and team who are, you know, massively pushing technology forward and will lead into 6G as well. You have a fallow capacity model that is very, very, very focused.
You know, mid 30 million hexbins, we call it, where we're modeling out at that hexbin level what is capacity, what is utilization gonna look like. When we have excess capacity there far into the future, that's where we approve somebody for 5G broadband. That's why you can monetize the capacity while your network speeds are increasing, your 5G broadband speeds are increasing. I think it's the focus on how we approach the tech. Of course, how we approach value with respect to 5G broadband is similar to mobile. Experiences, and it's simple. You know, it's a plug-and-play, a great T-Life onboarding experience, and the proof is in NPS. Everything we do all distills down to, well, what do customers think?
Customers think this is a category, and our product specifically, that they appreciate more than fiber as a category.
it Verizon said this morning my math was wrong. I'll stick up for my math.
I would too.
I'll ask you the same question which prompted that response, which was average usage of fixed customers and average usage of mobile customers would suggest that as much as two-thirds of all the traffic on your network today is coming from your FWA customers. Maybe 6% of your revenues, and that was as of almost a year ago at this point. That doesn't give you pause to say, "Wait a second, is there a mismatch of network resources here relative to the revenue we're getting for it?
No, not at all. Quite the opposite. It's not near 70%, but you know, it's up there, and I don't think your math is that far off on any of us. What this represents is Because again, because of how we approach it, which is, well, this is capacity, because of where we are from a spectrum position and macro position and technology position, it's a, it's basically unutilized capacity. It would've been there, you would've been paying for all of it, vis-à-vis the spectrum, the site leases, all of that, the backhaul, and not monetizing it at all. What it actually represents is a brilliant way to monetize that capacity. One other thing to, of course, note is 70% of traffic is a far cry from 70% of network capacity.
Yes.
Total network capacity.
Fairly right, yeah.
It's massively lower. To me, hey, why couldn't we do this earlier? There was reasons we couldn't do this earlier and why we invented this category of this is a smart way to create a multi-billion dollar business with post-paid phone like ARPUs and CLVs, ARPA accretion, customer satisfaction, all by using more smartly the things that you had sitting there unutilized before.
It's a related topic, but it sort of segues to AI, which I think is a really interesting topic for wireless. Part of the reason you have excess capacity, at least relative to what we would have predicted a couple of years ago, is because the growth rate of mobile traffic consumption on traditional devices decelerated somewhat. There's an argument that it will radically re-accelerate, whether it's from delivery drones or driverless vehicles or robotics or meta glasses or all kinds of different applications. I know John Saw would say that's coming. Do you see that coming? Is that the sort of the house view that there is about to be this explosion in network demand?
You know, we're not sure. The reality is we haven't seen it yet. A lot of the workloads from AI at the moment aren't, you know, all the way through to an end user device. Where search has gone, it's kind of just replaced traditional search, you know, so it's been a substitute there. The beauty of it is this is a network where we're factoring in increased utilization. We have a lot more capacity. We have a lot more capacity with advancement coming, and so we're best positioned. If that really does materialize, then that's a great position to be in from a monetization perspective.
We're certainly, and the network team is very cognizant of we're protecting and creating a lot more capacity in the network that, you know, this would have to be something, like, well, we've never seen ever, ever before to really be problematic, and then there's ways to deal with it, and it, of course, brings up a lot of monetization.
It's opportunity as well.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
mobile edge computing and that sort of thing being one of them.
Mobile edge compute.
That I think that this.
You know, we laugh at mobile edge computing.
The AI version of mobile edge computing, which is using some of those facilities for inference and that sort of thing.
Well, it's so different. I mean, you know, We never put in our plan, you know, mobile edge computing way back in the day, and we didn't have to take it out, and we were kind of like, "Well, we don't think this is gonna potentially pan out," because mobile edge computing as it was originally thought of many, many years ago, kind of like a millimeter wave strategy, that was also misplaced.
From the same company.
Perhaps was really about, okay, well, I'm gonna take, you know, 20, 30 milliseconds of latency away from some application that, well, it'll go faster than it can get to the cloud and back. There was really no, well, okay, what tangible benefit is that gonna bring?
Yeah.
There wasn't. What Physical AI brings is something totally different. It's not, you know, MEC and the advent of MEC. It's a completely different architecture integrated with the network and doing things that actually can bring and solve real problems. For example, you know, if you really believe there's gonna be a large Physical AI, you know, workforce or drones, all the more critical that they have the ability to know where they are and when they are and when they are relative to other things. You know, space-time coherency as John Saw calls it. I too have a physics degree, but I'm a, you know, a nobody compared to John Saw. It's, like, listen, Let's just take a robotics use case.
If you wanted to have a fleet of robots out there that would have all the on-robot processing capability, sensoring capability to know where they are in relation to, you know, everything they need and everybody else, it's just, it's not feasible. You can do all that processing on the network that inherently, particularly where we at in 5G, has a lot of space-time coherency in a way that, you know, clouds can't provide. Now you can take compute off the robots, batteries off the robots, sensoring off the robots, and enable it with, you know, at the edge Physical AI. I think it's gonna be very interesting. None of this is in our plan from a, you know, service revenue assumption or anything like that, but it's let's be the technology leaders and let's build the network to be AI capable.
We're not incrementally investing as a result of this. It's gonna be a byproduct, fallow capacity, you know? I think we're excited about it. Nothing's in the plan about it. We're gonna be best positioned for it. It's different than MEC.
Okay. Back to the gritty nuts and bolts of reality and where we are today. All three of you and both of your competitors have talked about getting away from the promotional handset model. Talk about that. you know, where it looks like, you know What do you think is coming with the next iPhone cycle with foldables.
Yeah,
Sort of thing? Is there any way to actually not just get sucked into this kind of perpetual treadmill of handset subsidies?
Yeah. I, you know, you've seen us make moves around this already in Q1 and Q2, optimizing. By the way, this doesn't mean we're going away from device subsidies. We're just really optimizing it for what consumers really want instead of this broad-based rush to, well, who's got the freest phone. I think you had the, you know, the term of iPhone dropping from helicopters. Still couldn't get the accounts they needed as a result of that, so be it. It really is let's focus in on what makes T-Mobile special for consumers, and it's not the once every few years device upgrade cycle and how free it is. For some subset of customers, that's important. It's always gonna be important. We don't want to subsidize anymore. We have no appetite for that.
We have an appetite to focus and hone in on, what are all those incremental value elements and experience elements and network elements that you get with T-Mobile that is how you live with our service and our product every single day versus once every three years? That's what resonates. That's what allowed us to, you know, have deliver 217,000 postpaid account net additions in Q1. Do that, and this was important. Do that with inflow ARPUs actually 20% higher than outflow ARPUs in Q1. You know, you're attracting really great consumers, and you can't do that just with here's a free phone. You have to demonstrate to them the product and the value that you're bringing. That's really gonna be more of the focus point. We've trimmed, you know, and optimized already in Q2 on device offers.
I can't read the future. I don't know what a foldable device is going to look like or cost or anything like that. The focus from us, you'll see a lot more of, well, we don't want to subsidize more. What we want to do is demonstrate to you why this is the best choice on a day-to-day basis, you know, and how you live with T-Mobile.
How do you as CFO prioritize on the one hand, your value proposition and best value positioning is absolutely central to who you are as a company. On the other hand, you have commitments to your investors and you have guidance and that sort of thing. How do you prioritize the especially in terms of back book versus front book of your customers? Because your front book is actually now not radically different than your peers, but your back book is still cheaper. How do you think about that, hitting that right balance?
Well, I think it's something that's inherent to. You know, that's how we've been focused all along. We're not interested in, you know, short-term cuts on, I don't know, CapEx to make free cash flow work. That doesn't create value for the company or shareholders in the long term. That's not what we're interested in, and I don't think there's a choice point to be made there. I think it's about how do you actually continue to deliver what customers want? Of course, that's gonna include, you know, up-tiering on the rate plans, more value. There'll be, and we've said there might be, you know, continued rate plan optimizations on the margin.
What's really worked and what's differentiated us from a service revenue and profitability and free cash flow delivery is that our approach to the P&Q and value and experience, I think optimizes value creation. To me, there isn't some sort of trade-off we're making every quarter on, "Well, if I just cut this, I can make guidance." It is about the ethos of how we operate as a company. We're gonna make the right smart investments in customers, the network, and the service revenue comes, the volume comes, the free cash flow comes. I think we've been able to demonstrate that. To me, there isn't a trade-off. It's how you approach the business the right way, which is honed in on value creation.
Very quickly, I just wanna touch on fiber. I know it's not the foundation of what you do, but you introduced new T-Mobile Fiber pricing a couple of weeks ago, April 30th, I think it was. You dropped your five-year price guarantee, also you dropped the requirement that it come with wireless to get the lower price. You've got prices as low as $45 and that sort of thing. Can you make money at those kinds of price points? Where do you get the customers?
Yeah.
Is that a you bring them in and then price them up later, or is that, are you setting a new price point in the market?
I think what you're seeing from us there, and by the way, it's obviously we're new to this space. We're making a little bit of a splash. I'm not gonna talk all the competitive, you know, nuances of how we plan to price in the future. We introduced tiered structures, which were so successful bringing customers in and then having self-select up the rate plan. I think we're very excited about what we're seeing traction-wise there. Call it like, you know, there's promotionality, there's like, "Hey, we're here, new to the neighborhood. Let's make a little bit of a splash," while letting customers self-select up that plan, which is so fabulously successful for us in mobile and 5G broadband.
We've got time for one last question, probably everyone's favorite. You've got a $22 billion discretionary and flexible envelope. How do you weigh that versus further M&A for expanding your wired footprint?
For acquiring spectrum, for deleveraging? Talk about your priorities and for you, I think it's sort of a smorgasbord buffet of right? There's a lot of attractive opportunities.
Well, there's a lot of opportunities, but for us it's all about a very consistent capital allocation framework, again, focused on value creation for the company. We always start with leverage. We do believe 2.5% is the right place for us. We just recently had an S&P upgrade, by the way, so it's a fabulous journey of where we're at from the debt capital markets perspective. We think about investing in the business because that drives tremendous returns. That includes areas like spectrum. We can make smart M&A decisions, provided that they have the right IRRs and value creation. You saw us do that with things like smaller scale and T-Ads as we scale the advertising platform and grow there.
Could be things like fiber, but it has to fit within the ethos of exactly what we're looking for for fiber, or shareholder returns, which we just, you know, increased. You know, we've now repurchased, I think, a little over 240 million shares since the program inception. We're just over a billion shares out there total outstanding, which is a fabulous place. We've been able to, you know, enhance the dividend every single year. We think about it from all those perspectives and focus on value.
Well, I appreciate the time you spent with us this morning and, or this afternoon, and I look forward to having you back for your 13th visit next year.
Thank you so much for having us, Craig.
Thank you.
Yeah.