- Wireless carriers are expanding beyond their traditional pricing lanes, according to Navi
- T-Mobile now leads the industry in premium-plan adoption
- Cable operators are increasingly challenging the Big 3 at the higher end of the market
Slowly but surely, U.S. wireless carriers and their cable rivals are shifting their priorities in how they price their services. For years, AT&T and Verizon were identified as serving the premium end while cable, prepaid and T-Mobile skewed more toward the lower-end plans.
That’s all changing, with premium carriers offering more plans aimed at value-conscious consumers and cable pushing into the premium market, according to Navi, which analyzes phone plans on a daily basis. Consumers can compare price plans on Navi’s website for free; Navi makes some of its revenue by selling its pricing data to carriers.
“We're seeing all of these carriers sort of expand to serve more segments. Not that they're necessarily flipping and not serving their old segments, but it’s more that everybody is now serving the value end and a more premium, more feature-rich end of the market,” Mike Tarr, general manager of Data & Insights at Navi, told Fierce. “So more choice for consumers is kind of the way that we see it.”
T-Mobile moves upward
Consumers switch carriers for various reasons, one of which is when operators hike prices, like T-Mobile recently did for some customers on older 3G and 4G plans. Historically, T-Mobile built its business on winning value-conscious customers in urban markets by undercutting its rivals on price.
But in April 2025, T-Mobile released its Experience Plans, which were expensive and aggressive on device subsidies, shifting its strategy to capture more premium shoppers, according to Navi.
“In just over a year, it has become the most premium-skewed carrier in the industry; according to Navi data, in 2026, 53% of T-Mobile shoppers have landed on its premium tier of offerings, with AT&T and Verizon in the mid-40s, and that lead has held steady for most of the year,” Navi wrote in a recent report shared exclusively with Fierce.
T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan acknowledged as much when he said during its Q2 earnings call that 60% of new customers chose its premium tier of plans.
According to Navi, T-Mobile also carries the richest feature set overall of the Big 3 and cable MVNOs, with generous allotments of premium data, hotspot data and included perks like Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV+. Its top-of-the-line plans also include T-Satellite, the direct-to-device (D2D) service it offers via Starlink.
T-Mobile, Verizon and perks
On the lower end of the spectrum, Verizon in June 2026 launched its Simplicity plan at $30/line, which comes with no device subsidies or multi-line discounts. It also launched a loyalty program that it says is better than T-Mobile Tuesdays because it offers daily drops.
Verizon and T-Mobile in particular have put more emphasis on streaming subscriptions and perks, although they approach it slightly differently, Tarr said. AT&T doesn’t offer the same kind of perks.
“AT&T is really just the mobile service and the different features associated with that,” he said, noting that AT&T differentiates itself based on features like hotspot data allotments. “But they don't include ancillary services, like streaming or other things like that within the plans.”
D2D: Not a lot of interest now
D2D continues to be a hot topic, fueled by SpaceX’s IPO and speculation over how it’s going to disrupt the existing mobile carriers.
Fierce asked what Navi has observed about the D2D space and Tarr said a pretty limited segment of users – typically, less than 10% – visit Navi’s site specifically looking to add satellite coverage.
“We don't see a huge amount of consumers saying: what I want is satellite coverage, and that's why they're shopping for wireless service,” he said. “It's hard for us to say whether that's driving the market experience.”
Right now, all the big carriers offer satellite SOS messaging on iPhones via Apple’s service and T-Mobile offers its D2D offer with Starlink. Verizon offers Skylo D2D for Android devices and both Verizon and AT&T are working with AST SpaceMobile to offer its D2D service once that satellite constellation is ready.
Free lines = more net adds
One puzzling thing about the wireless industry is how broadly speaking, carriers continue to report net new customers every quarter when most people already have a phone and service. (Or they did; T-Mobile stopped reporting postpaid net phone additions this year.)
Tarr said it’s a complicated question to answer. “We don't work inside the carriers to know exactly where these are coming from. But I would say that many industry participants for a long time have asked this question, which is to say, most people have a phone at this point. Population stays a certain rate, and yet net adds in the industry seem to exceed that,” he said.
Fierce asked: How many of these additions are free lines?
“I think our perspective is we don't know the full answer … There are free lines floating out there. Many carriers at this point have had some sort of free line offer. You'll see it from the cable players where they both do ‘first line free’ for a year.”
T-Mobile in the past has given away a lot of free lines and currently has a third line free when the customer signs up in a store. Verizon has offered free lines for a limited time, he said.
“There are lots of companies out there offering free lines in some respect or another, and I think that can certainly help to create some net adds for the carriers,” he said.
Navi’s future forecasts
Navi’s sphere of coverage includes the Big 3, as well as Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile brand and Charter Communications’ Spectrum Mobile. It has pricing data for prepaid brands as well, but that's not part of what it shares on its website. It's also considering whether it wants to add more MVNOs, but there are a lot of them out there.
“We're actively thinking about that,” Tarr said. “There are a large number of MVNOs in this space, so figuring out which ones to cover and how is sort of the question for us now.”
More Fierce Network stories about wireless pricing:
Verizon didn’t actually trigger a price war: analysts