T-Mobile surpasses Sprint to become the top prepaid phone service in the U.S.

By Williams Pelegrin August 7, 2014

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With 15.64 million subscribers, T-Mobile found it fit to announce today that it is now the largest prepaid service provider in the United States.

Related: Is it over? Sprint and T-Mobile may not merge after all

By comparison, Sprint now has 15.19 million prepaid subscribers, which are split between Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. AT&T and Verizon, meanwhile, lag behind T-Mobile with 11.34 million and 6.04 million prepaid subscribers, respectively.

T-Mobile also announced that MetroPCS, which the carrier merged with back in 2012, surpassed the 10 million subscriber mark, adding 1.2 million subscribers in the last year. T-Mobile CEO John Legere is unsurprisingly happy about the news.

“The good news just keeps on coming for T-Mobile,” said Legere. “The momentum we’re seeing with our T-Mobile and MetroPCS brands is outstanding, and the fact that we’ve blown by everyone to take the No. 1 spot in prepaid is icing on the cake.” Legere even made a bold, yet not entirely unreasonable, assertion that T-Mobile will surpass Sprint in prepaid and postpaid customers, combined.

Related: Sacré bleu! French company Iliad makes $15 billion bid for T-Mobile USA

From a business perspective, investors are more fond of postpaid subscriber numbers than prepaid. With customers stuck in two-year contracts or device payment plans, postpaid subscribers are seeing as a more reliable source of profit for wireless providers. Even so, T-Mobile’s prepaid subscriber numbers are nothing to scoff at.

Sprint, meanwhile, seems to be in a bit of a funk. After it reportedly killed its planned merger with T-Mobile, the third largest carrier in the U.S. announced that it would replace Dan Hesse with Brightstar CEO Marcelo Claure as the company’s president and CEO.

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Williams Pelegrin

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…

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