T-Mobile US CFO Peter Osvaldik (pictured) claimed his company isn’t threatened by cable operators offering more competitively priced low- and mid-tier unlimited MVNO plans during a presentation to an investor conference earlier this week.

Osvaldik argued that T-Mobile enjoys competition because it creates “consideration” moments for consumers and enterprises that his company tends to win.

Despite Charter Communications and Comcast continuing to add mobile subscribers through their respective MVNO agreements with Verizon, Osvaldik doesn’t see them as much of a threat.

Charter Communications and Comcast both had more than 2 million wireless subscribers at the end of Q4 2021, which includes subscribers using Wi-Fi.

GSMA Intelligence put T-Mobile’s connections at 109 million at the same point.

Without naming Charter Communications and Comcast, Osvaldik said cable operators have seen roughly the same run rates for subscribers signing up for their MVNO wireless services over the past five years.

“They’re running about the same pace every single quarter: roughly about 10 per cent share of gross adds. Sometimes a little bit less, sometimes it’ll be into the low teens. But that’s the environment we’ve been playing in for the last five years, and it certainly hasn’t hindered our ability to deliver>”

Osvaldik said T-Mobile had 210 million mid-band points-of-presence (PoPs) at the end of 2021 and it plans to hit 300 million by the end of 2023.

Taking aim
The CFO also took a shot at major rivals Verizon and AT&T, and newcomers.

“To give you some context of what they have ahead of them to get from 100 million covered PoPs to 200 million covered PoPS on mid-band, for us it was three-times the number of towers,” he said.

“It’s going to take them a while to get to 200.”

Meanwhile Osvaldik expects Dish Network to become a player in the postpaid service arena once it gets its 5G network up and running, but he doesn’t see the company being much of a threat initially due to the amount of mid-band spectrum T-Mobile has already deployed in the nation’s top-100 markets.

Additional opportunities
Osvaldik said T-Mobile sees additional market opportunities by offering its fixed wireless access (FWA) services in rural or underserved areas, while also building its enterprise and government sector to 20 per cent market share by 2025.

One area of potential growth for T-Mobile is a new MVNO agreement with Altice US.

On the company’s fourth quarter earnings call in February, Altice CEO Dexter Goei said his company was “on the one-yard line” in regards to announcing a new MVNO agreement with T-Mobile.