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Here's how far T-Mobile is straying from its job-creating promises of 2020

By Adrian Diaconescu

Updated: Feb 21, 2023, 6:00 AM

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Here's how far T-Mobile is straying from its job-creating promises of 2020

There used to be a time (not that long ago) when T-Mobile was in the news mainly for good reasons, ranging from unrivaled promotions and deals on smartphones and plans to sweet loyalty-rewarding perks (every Tuesday) and an industry-leading 5G network buildout.

But while the "Un-carrier" continues to be considered the US 5G king as far as both availability and speeds go and its special offers and gifts are still occasionally pretty hard to beat, most of the recent media coverage has been bad... and really bad.

Between bad network outages, security breaches, fee hikes, and controversial plan revisions, T-Mo has made numerous headlines over the last couple of years for really bad layoffs.

These are not just bad on a "human" level, leaving thousands of former T-Mobile, Sprint, and Metro by T-Mobile employees without a job in a tough economic climate, also breaking a key promise made in the process of getting a multi-billion-dollar merger approved back in 2020.

9,501 fewer people are now employed by the "New T-Mobile"

You may not remember this now, but "New T-Mobile" was the marketing moniker given to the giant resulting from the union between T-Mobile and Sprint before said union got all the necessary regulatory approvals.

The merger process, remember, was started all the way back in 2018, and for two whole years, then-CEO John Legere insisted the "New T-Mobile" would be "jobs-positive from Day One and every day thereafter."

In an extensive and almost surprisingly detailed newsroom article in April 2019, for instance, Legere firmly committed to have "more than 11,000 additional employees" on Magenta's payroll by 2024 compared to what the "combined standalone companies would have."

Legere, of course, is no longer at T-Mo's helm, the merger's "Day One" is nearly three years in the rearview mirror now, and the "New T-Mobile" employs 9,501 people less than the combined 2018 numbers of the "old T-Mobile" and Sprint.

That's according to official SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings checked by LightReading, mind you, and it follows multiple rounds of layoffs reported in the last couple of years and anticipated by many industry experts well beforehand.

Clearly, T-Mo didn't "create" enough (if any) jobs to offset these layoffs, some of which were understandably meant to eliminate "redundancies." It's also not clear if the company took any steps whatsoever to make good on promises to open hundreds of new stores to "serve rural areas and small towns", although it's a pretty well-known fact that many retail locations were closed in recent months.

Is T-Mobile fulfilling other merger promises?

Not that it matters much to all of the folks who've lost their jobs since 2020, but it's fairly obvious that the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint has had a positive effect on the US wireless industry in a few key ways.

With the help of Sprint's mid-band spectrum, the "Un-carrier" has definitely fulfilled its commitment to "rapidly build out" its nationwide 5G infrastructure, investing billions of dollars in "network and business expansion" efforts that have put massive pressure on Verizon and AT&T to step up their own network deployment and improvement work, thus benefiting all consumers across the nation.

Another important promise that T-Mobile appears to have technically fulfilled concerns the plans, offers, benefits, and perks of its customers. These have indeed gone unchanged for three years, but with that "deadline" around the corner, the unpopular revisions seem to be coming fast.

Unfortunately, there's obviously no way for any person or authority to force T-Mo to keep all of its offers unchanged for perpetuity, and it's highly unlikely that the company will be punished in any way for cutting jobs at a (convenient) time when so many other corporations are doing the same.

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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.