T-Mobile CEO announces international call service, says his competition ‘sucks’ and is ‘bloated’

David Brancaccio Oct 10, 2013
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T-Mobile CEO announces international call service, says his competition ‘sucks’ and is ‘bloated’

David Brancaccio Oct 10, 2013
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T-Mobile CEO John Legere has announced a new international call service.

“What we’re about is solving pain points and one of the real big pain points is people are scared to death of overages and restrictions when they step over a border to another country. What we’re doing is we’re making the world your home network. We’re going to offer unlimited international data roaming and text in 115 countries and here’s the big part — the price? Free. It’s in your simple choice calling plan and when you wake up on November 1, if you’re on of our customers, you’re going to have this,” says Legere. 

Why is T-Mobile starting this service? Legere says Americans take 55 million trips internationally each year, but 40 percent of people who travel abroad turn their phones off before they leave the country because they don’t want to get shocked by a bill with high charges. He says T-Mobile’s new service takes care of those worries. 

As for criticism from comeptitors who say that T-Mobile is a bottom feeder and grabs the lower end of the market, Legere is unfazed. He says, “We have, call it 12, 14 percent market share. You know, I’ll just slowly get 5 or 6 [percent] more. In fact, they can keep what they’ve got. I’m perfectly happy. I will just migrate along… We want to serve all of the customers. And frankly, if they want us to take a certain set, we’ll take those.”

On what else he thinks of his competition — and what words he associates with AT&T and Verizon:

On how and why his style has evolved over time:

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