T-Mobile may have finally overtaken Sprint in subscribers

There are four major wireless service providers in the United States, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon. What can change is the positioning of those for carriers, which is currently Verizon at the top, followed by AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile respectively. T-Mobile has been doing exceptionally well these past few months thanks to its aggressiveness, and analysts have been predicting it could overtake Sprint at any time, and it looks like that time may be now. 

The battle for the top spot among US wireless service providers is rather bland; first and second place Verizon and AT&T lead comfortably with over 100 million subscribers apiece, a subscriber base so large neither is particularly worried about expanding their market share. However, the battle for third place is actually quite interesting, as T-Mobile has been aggressively vying for the third place spot held by Sprint since its first “Uncarrier” event in March, 2013. A recent publication by Evercore ISI adds fuel to the fiery rivalry between T-Mobile and Sprint. Ahead of Sprint’s official quarterly earnings report research published by Evercore ISI, a Wall Street based investment bank advisory firm, suggests that Sprint likely lost 1.8 million postpaid subscribers in Q1 2015. Based on official numbers from Q4 2014, Sprint and T-Mobile were tied for 3rd place with 55 million subscribers each (according to T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere T-Mobile would be larger if Sprint didn’t include inactive MVNO subscribers in their numbers). Considering T-Mobile added 1.8 million subscribers in Q1 2015 they should have outpaced Sprint by a large enough margin to warrant an undoubtable claim to the third place spot amongst US carriers; if Evercore ISI’s numbers prove to be correct.