John Legere certainly thinks he’s having the last laugh. The vocal T-Mobile CEO, who’s known for his opinions (and his willingness to share them) recently told Business Insider that he finds competitor Verizon’s current situation with their recent Yahoo purchase “hilarious.” He was chuckling as he said, “Like, oh my God, you not only bought Yahoo, but they’re a mess before you brought them in.” This was a reference to the recently revealed story of Yahoo falling victim to a hack, which may be the largest in history, affecting up to 1 billion users. At the time when Legere made these comments, it had not yet been reported that Verizon was having second thoughts about its nearly $5 billion discount, and allegedly now wants to shave $1 billion off the price.
Imagine what Legere would’ve said about that.
Never one to mince words, Legere had plenty to say about not only Verizon and their Yahoo debacle, but also about his other competitors, like AT&T and Sprint. In fact, at one point during the interview, he referred to AT&T and Verizon as “dumb and dumber” collectively (though we should point out that according to some metrics, Verizon has been the top mobile service network for quite some time).
But despite T-Mobile’s third-place status in terms of U.S. subscribers, Legere seems to think that he has the competition in the bag. Speaking of AT&T, he said, “AT&T basically hasn’t added a postpaid customer on the voice side since Q2 of 2014! If I hear one more time that in two quarters their over-the-top offers are coming out and life’s going to be grand … it’s to protect and defend their profit streams and play a different game in the future.” He then added, “They refer to customers as units of acquisition. They just don’t get it. The guy that runs the wireless is like four levels down from the top, and he’s not even allowed to do anything.”
And as for Sprint, Legere, if nothing else, is delighted by their recent commercials, which feature a well-known character who once asked Verizon customers, “Can you hear me now?”
“Sprint is … people don’t fully comprehend that their economics and balance sheet have them on a timer for when you’re going to cook an egg or something,” Legere said. “But they stumbled onto a good commercial. It’ll run its course, but it’s clever. Their ads are not true, though — there’s a gigantic difference in networks. But I don’t talk about them, ever. I compete with Sprint with [T-Mobile US subsidiary] MetroPCS, and it’s completely cleaning their clocks.”
To read more of Legere’s ever-controversial thoughts, check out the full interview here.
