T-Mobile’s Impossible 2015 Predictions

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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T-Mobile US Inc.’s (NASDAQ: TMUS) CEO John Legere has made a set of impossible predictions for 2015. They show just how unrealistic the Un-Carriers’s goals, and comments about the industry, have become.

Among them:

Over the past 20 months — and eight industry-rocking Un-carrier moves later — we’ve built massive momentum and ignited this revolution. Millions and millions of Americans know T-Mobile is changing wireless for the better.

Or the number might just be in the hundreds of thousands. There is no way to prove the figures either way.

Also:

I love it when people share their network speed tests, and T-Mobile is just blazing fast. But, I love it even more when people tell me where they have coverage gaps vs. the duopoly.

In a recent study by research firm RootMetrics, T-Mobile was bested in most major categories in comparisons among Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S), AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). In both “Speed Index rankings” and “Data Performance rankings” the Un-carrier finished third. RootMetrics pointed out that T-Mobile’s ratings improved, but not enough to move ahead of Verizon or AT&T.

Another set of comments by Legere:

AT&T will find new ways to cause their customers pain.

Sprint will continue throwing out campaigns, offers and promotions.

Verizon will keep trying to baffle American wireless customers with BS promos.

Both self-serving and impossible to forecast in any meaningful way.

According to Legere:

I’ll be in conversation with nearly 2M Twitter followers (at the very least 1.5M…) by the end of the year.

Or maybe that number will only be a million, or perhaps less.

A number of things show that confidence in the future of T-Mobile is shaky. Not the least of them is the verdict of Wall Street. Over the past year, shares of T-Mobile are down 19%. Shares of Verizon are down only 5%, about the same as shares of AT&T. The S&P 500 has risen 12% over the same period.

It is hard to find much to buttress Legere’s predictions.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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