T-Mobile US proclaimed 2020 its best ever year for post-paid net additions, issuing preliminary results showing substantial gains despite Covid-19 (coronavirus) headwinds.

Net additions in 2020 stood at 5.6 million, with post-paid accounting for 5.5 million. Of this, 2.2 million were phone customers, with the remainder comprising other fields including tablet and IoT connections.

The operator ended 2020 with 102.1 million connections, a record high.

In Q4, net additions stood at 1.7 million, of which 1.6 million were post-paid connections with phone customers accounting for 824,000.

At an investor conference yesterday (6 January), CEO Mike Sievert (pictured) noted it made gains despite widespread store closures and a lower volume of customers seeking to switch providers due to Covid-19.

He explained “post-paid is growing at the expense of prepaid”, with families adding lines for members who may have previously had a separate pay-as-you-go account.

The executive also provided a network update, noting its mid-band 5G network now covers 106 million people as it targets 200 million by end-2021.

President of Technology Neville Ray added more than 20 per cent of post-paid traffic from legacy Sprint customers was running on T-Mobile’s network at the end of Q4 2020, up from 15 per cent at end-Q3.