- T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan reiterated it’s not interested in an MVNO with SpaceX, saying such a deal wouldn’t expand its total addressable market
- The company emphasized a differentiated strategy that involves network leadership, value and customer experience
- Execs say that strategy led to an increase of 217,000 postpaid accounts in Q1 2026, a 6% year-over-year increase
It looks as though Wall Street is fixated on the idea T-Mobile might do an MVNO with SpaceX. T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan was asked that question at an investor conference in March and again Tuesday during the company’s Q1 earnings conference call.
The question came from LightShed Partners’ Walter Piecyk, who tied it to T-Mobile’s earlier Tuesday announcement about SuperBroadband, which uses Starlink as a backup for businesses using T-Mobile’s 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service.
Gopalan’s answer both times was pretty much the same. First, he made sure to delineate between the direct-to-cell (D2C) relationship with Starlink and the broadband service offered with Starlink via SuperBroadband.
They’re two separate, but complementary products.
In D2C, Gopalan acknowledged that they’re seeing less usage than they originally expected – T-Satellite is mostly used in national parks. But he credits T-Mobile and Starlink for inventing the category, which rivals will increasingly mimic with their own offerings with low Earth orbit (LEO) operators.
As for an MVNO, “we’ve got a very clear philosophy or approach to MVNOs,” he said. “MVNOs make sense for us when it’s a TAM [total addressable market] expansion. A TAM expansion happens because there’s a new customer base that we couldn’t target earlier.”
An example of that is the MVNO that T-Mobile did with cable in the business market. “It’s not obvious to me how an MVNO with SpaceX or any other LEO operator” fulfills those requirements.
T-Mobile Fiber ventures
Earlier today, T-Mobile announced plans to form two more joint fiber ventures, one with private equity firm Oak Hill Capital to acquire and combine GoNetspeed and Greenlight Networks, and another with WrenHouse to acquire i3 Broadband. These are on top of the fiber JVs it has with EQT to operate Lumos and KKR to operate Metronet.
Srini said the existing fiber JVs that they launched are tracking well. “They’re delivering exactly what we expected,” he said. “The lift from the [T-Mobile] brand and our distribution is completely in line with our expectations.”
Speculation has been floating around for a while that T-Mobile might be interested in buying a cable company. Srini addressed that as well.
“Cable is not something we're interested in. We see our strength as attacking incumbents rather than becoming an incumbent,” he said. “We see a huge opportunity to attack incumbents across fiber and FWA. That’ll be our key play.”
T-Mobile’s differentiation strategy
A popular message pushed by company executives during the earnings call was the notion that T-Mobile has a differentiated strategy built on network, value and customer experience that drives “outsized” financial results.
Indeed, T-Mobile added 217,000 postpaid net accounts in Q1 2026, a 6% year-over-year increase. Postpaid average revenue per account (ARPA) was $151.93, up 3.9% year over year.
T-Mobile CFO Peter Osvaldik highlighted those figures before dishing for a bit on some of Verizon and AT&T’s Q1 numbers. For example, Verizon’s ARPA was down almost 2% year over year and AT&T reported the highest year-over-year postpaid churn in the industry, “proving that, you know, all the convergence talk is just that,” he said.
In some ways, though, it’s harder to compare T-Mobile’s Q1 with its peers because the company announced earlier this year that it’s no longer going to report postpaid phone net additions, a key metric that investment analysts relied on for years.
T-Mobile said most of its customers are on multi-line accounts, so the phone metric supposedly means less.
However, both Verizon and AT&T told Fierce they planned to continue reporting phone net adds.
Yesterday, Verizon surprised when it reported 55,000 phone net additions in Q1, as most analysts were expecting a loss of 89,000. Verizon also increased its guidance for the year, saying it expects 750,000 to 1 million net phone adds in 2026.
AT&T reported 294,000 new postpaid phone customers in Q1 and prepaid phone losses of 72,000.