Inside T-Mobile’s earnings: Technology Business Research analyst Eric Costa says T-Mobile is adding the most retail customers among the big wireless carriers due to its “Un-carrier” strategy. What’s that? Costa explains.

HAMPTON, N.H. – T-Mobile continued to attack the wireless market with force in 3Q14, which resulted in the highest retail net additions among Tier 1 operators (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T).

T-Mobile’s actions, which have led to success in 2014, will continue to benefit the company moving into 2015. T-Mobile’s long-term initiatives including its LTE network build, Un-carrier strategy and the addition of MetroPCS will help the operator improve its financial and subscriber position in 2015. T-Mobile will focus on increasing branded subscribers with its Simple Choice and MetroPCS plans and deploying its Wideband LTE service across its footprint in 2015. Without the pressure and distraction of a possible buyout looming, T-Mobile can push ahead with its aggressive strategies and increase revenue and margins in 2015.

T-Mobile is remaining aggressive in the postpaid market with its Un-carrier initiatives

T-Mobile reported its all-time record postpaid net additions in 3Q14 due to the continued success of the Un-carrier strategy and aggressive pricing. Its 1.4 million postpaid net additions trailed behind Verizon’s 1.5 million postpaid net additions slightly and almost doubled AT&T’s postpaid gains. T-Mobile will continue to aggressively target subscriber growth in 4Q14 and challenge Verizon for the lead in postpaid net additions.

The operator is attracting far more postpaid phone subscribers compared to Verizon, including 1.2 million in 3Q14. This is driving higher data revenue and ARPU growth. T-Mobile is also benefiting greatly from the latest iPhone release, with an estimated 2.6 million iPhone sales in 3Q14.

T-Mobile will continue to announce new Un-carrier initiatives to draw in additional subscribers in 2015. This strategy continues to benefit the operator and strengthen the T-Mobile brand. The latest Un-carrier developments included Un-carrier 7.0 – Wi-Fi Unleashed. This allows all of T-Mobile’s new smartphones to have Wi-Fi calling capabilities, the first operator to offer this service over all new phones.

T-Mobile will continue to capitalize on the MetroPCS integration to gain access to additional spectrum for its LTE network

T-Mobile will increase the MetroPCS footprint to continue to gain momentum in the prepaid market in 4Q14. Expanding the MetroPCS footprint will allow T-Mobile to drive higher prepaid revenue, subscribers and ARPU heading into 2015. T-Mobile expanded the MetroPCS brand into 10 markets in 3Q14 and expanded the number of points of sale by 900. Not only has T-Mobile been expanding aggressively its new prepaid brand, but also rapidly capitalizing on transitioning the MetroPCS customer base onto its own networks.

Already 78% of MetroPCS subscribers have transitioned, which has led the operator to be able to refarm 63% of the MetroPCS spectrum. This will provide T-Mobile with more spectrum bands to continue to expand its LTE network, which it expects to reach 300 million POPs by the end of 2015.

(C) TBR