T-Mobile isn’t worried about Starlink. The carrier’s chief executive claims that the threat from Starlink has been greatly exaggerated, and he struggles to see which consumer problems they would solve by entering the market.
Srini Gopalan, the president and chief executive of T-Mobile, said in an interview with FT this week “You’ve got to ask the question of ‘What is the gap in the market that they’re looking to serve?’” He continued by saying “I always prefer starting these conversations back from the customer: Why would a customer buy a new cellular service? Where do they go? What’s their differentiation? It’s clearly not having a broad network.”
These comments actually came before Elon Musk confirmed that Starlink plans to build out a US mobile network. Musk also said on the company’s earnings call this week that its terrestrial cellular network would “probably” have better connectivity and “higher bandwidth than what is currently available from cellular providers.”
Gopalan believes that satellite technology would remain “complementary” to existing networks. Starlink already works with T-Mobile and a few other carriers, providing satellite connectivity for emergency services and also as a supplement to their existing network coverage in rural areas.
Gopalan said T-Mobile kept AT&T and Verizon from ‘ripping people off’
The chief executive also talked about T-Mobile’s moves in the 2010s, like the low prices that “stopped AT&T and Verizon from ripping people off” during that time. And the fact that the 2020 merger with Sprint gave the company the firepower to invest in a series of network upgrades, allowing it to better compete with AT&T and Verizon.
T-Mobile now has roughly 85.6 million customers, up from around 66 million before the merger. That’s a pretty big chunk of the country, and puts them much closer to the big two than anyone would have thought just a decade ago.
The post T-Mobile’s CEO Says It’s Not Worried About Starlink, and Elon Musk Has Something to Say About That appeared first on Android Headlines.
