Has T-Mobile finally passed Sprint? It depends on how you count dead accounts

Earlier today, we reported on T-Mobile's earnings for both the fourth quarter of 2014 and for the full year. During the conference call this morning, T-Mobile CEO John Legere was asked the question that is on everyone's mind. Had T-Mobile finally passed Sprint to be the third largest carrier in the U.S.? It was a legitimate question seeing how fast T-Mobile has been growing.

Legere says that based on a technicality, T-Mobile has actually overtaken Sprint. Preliminary figures for the end of last month showed Sprint ahead by 1 million subscribers (Sprint had 56 million users, T-Mobile 55 million). However, a difference in the way that both mobile operators count inactive MVNO subscribers could account for the difference between Sprint and T-Mobile. The latter stops counting these non-revenue producing subscribers after 60 to 90 days. Sprint, on the other hand, waits for these accounts to be inactive for 6 months before dropping them officially.

If Sprint were to treat these "dead accounts" the same way that T-Mobile and other mobile operators do, the scoreboard would have T-Mobile ahead of Sprint by 700,000 subscribers. Technicality or no technicality, T-Mobile should officially jump to number three by the end of the current quarter.

source: TmoNews