T-Mobile US added 2.1 million customers during the second quarter, which might just be enough to see it overtake close rival Sprint.
The self-styled ‘un-carrier’ has also extended free roaming to neighbouring Canada and Mexico.
T-Mobile issued preliminary figures on Thursday showing that for the fourth consecutive quarter, branded postpaid net additions exceeded 1 million customers. 760,000 of those net additions were phone customers.
"T-Mobile continues to win with the industry’s most valuable customer segment – postpaid phone customers," said T-Mobile US chief executive John Legere, in a statement.
Branded prepaid customer additions came in at 178,000 in the second quarter, up 75% on a year ago. M2M connections declined by 33,000, while MVNO customers increased by 919,000.
In total, T-Mobile ended the second quarter with 58.9 million customers, compared to 56.8 million in the first quarter and 50.5 million a year earlier.
Sprint has yet to disclose its customer numbers for the second quarter, but it had 57.14 million at the end of March – just enough to cling on to third place. Sprint needs to have netted at least 1.8 million customers in the three months to 30 June in order to defend its position.
Signs of intensifying competition between Sprint and T-Mobile emerged last week when Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure took to Twitter to launch a diatribe against T-Mobile, after Legere mocked Sprint’s new unlimited data plan.
Meanwhile, T-Mobile US on Thursday also announced that its Simple Choice customers can roam in Canada and Mexico at no extra charge.
Called Mobile Without Borders, the offer covers calls to fixed and mobile numbers, text messages and data.
In 2014, Canada and M exico together accounted for 35% of international calls and 55% of all international travel originating from the U.S., T-Mobile said. In addition, Canada and Mexico accounted for 70% of international business trips undertaken from the U.S. last year.
Legere made no secret of the fact that Mobile Without Borders takes aim at AT&T, which recently acquired Mexican mobile operators Iusacell and Nextel in order to create a seamless North American service area.
"After spending billions buying up Mexican telecoms, AT&T’s CEO is promising ‘the first seamless network covering Mexico and the U.S.,’ something ‘unique’ that ‘nobody else will be able to do for the consumer’," said Legere. "So much for that. They won’t be the first. And they won’t offer Canada for free."
Mobile Without Borders will launch on 15 July.
