After leaving T-Mobile on track for 5G success, John Legere quits the carrier's board early

John Legere did quite an amazing job during his seven and a half years as CEO of T-Mobile. He took a carrier that was having trouble connecting with the American consumer, was late to finish its 3G and 4G LTE networks, and was last among the four U.S. majors in subscribers. Using unconventional methods (putting the customer first, actually knowing about the products his company was selling) he bombed the airwaves with cutting edge ads that energized the consumers. Lastly, Legere rewarded his subscribers with freebies like Netflix and started the T-Mobile Tuesdays rewards program.

Legere turned T-Mobile into the most dynamic, innovative, and fastest-growing of the four major stateside wireless providers. And the thing is, he did it on his terms. Insulting the competition, getting into a Twitter tussle with our future president, and letting his hair grow to rock star length, Legere became a media darling himself which actually helped him spread the T-Mobile name. Eventually, T-Mobile leapfrogged over Sprint, and with the latter now in the fold, T-Mobile is now a serious threat to Verizon and AT&T (or "dumb and dumber" in Legere-lese).

When John Legere left his CEO position on April 1st (the day that T-Mobile announced that it had officially merged with Sprint), he turned the keys over to his long time right-hand man Mike Sievert. There was still some consolation for his fans as Legere said that he would remain on T-Mobile's Board of Directors until June 4th. But yesterday, in the company's 8K filing with the SEC, T-Mobile wrote, "On April 24, 2020, John Legere notified T-Mobile US, Inc. that he was resigning from the Board of Directors (the “Board”) of the Company, effective immediately, to pursue other options. Mr. Legere noted that he was not resigning because of any disagreement with management or the Board on any matter. Previously, on April 1, 2020, upon his departure as CEO of the Company, Mr. Legere had stated that intended to continue as a member of the Board for the remainder of his current term, which ends on June 4, 2020."

In a statement, the reigning wireless CEO of the year said, "It has been a privilege and honor to have led T-Mobile as CEO for the past seven and a half years and served on the Board of Directors. And although I will be leaving the Board just a few weeks earlier than planned, be assured that I remain T-Mobile’s #1fan!"

While we have no idea where Legere is heading, you might recall that back in November there was speculation that the executive was being lured to WeWork by former Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. That never happened and Legere remained at T-Mobile. Ironically, Legere's departure from T-Mobile comes a day after one of his major foils, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, left his post at AT&T after 13 years as CEO. Stephenson will be replaced by president and chief operating officer, John Stankey.

Legere isn't walking away empty handed of course. SEC documents reveal that the former CEO currently owns 2.5 million shares of T-Mobile currently valued at $227 million dollars. That will certainly buy him plenty of t-shirts! More importantly to T-Mobile customers, Legere leaves the carrier in excellent shape. With the acquisition of Sprint and its 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum, T-Mobile's 5G network is expected by some analysts to become the fastest in the states. Over the next few years, the carrier says that its 5G download data speeds will be eight times faster than 4G LTE and increase to 16 times faster in six years.