T-Mobile and other wireless carriers have benefited from a growing consumer trend in recent months, leading to increased demand for their internet services.
Against this backdrop, T-Mobile has revamped its internet plans to keep customers from flocking to its rivals as competition intensifies.
In the first few months of 2026, the company attracted more than 500,000 new customers to its fiber and fixed wireless internet services, T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan revealed during an earnings call on April 28. Specifically, he said that fixed wireless internet additions were “accelerating year over year.”
This growth comes as more U.S. consumers drop traditional cable internet services amid higher bills.
For example, Spectrum lost a whopping 120,000 internet customers in the first quarter of this year, while Comcast’s Xfinity lost 65,000. The losses came shortly after both companies issued several price increases for their internet services over the past year.
T-Mobile isn’t the only company that appears to be rapidly gaining those lost customers. In the first quarter, Verizon welcomed 341,000 new broadband customers, while AT&T gained 584,000, according to their latest earnings reports.
To capitalize on this trend, Verizon and AT&T recently made billion-dollar acquisitions to expand their fiber internet footprint nationwide and offer more customers bundled mobile and internet deals.
In January, Verizon acquired Frontier for $20 billion. The following month, AT&T completed its $5.75 billion acquisition of Lumen’s Mass Markets fiber business, a move that made AT&T’s fiber internet service available across 32 states.
T-Mobile updates its fiber internet plans for customers
As competition heats up, T-Mobile has quietly revamped its fiber internet offerings, a change that took effect on April 30.
Previously, T-Mobile offered three fiber internet plans: Fiber 500 Mbps for $55 per month (with autopay activated), Fiber 1 Gig for $65 per month (with autopay and a voiceline), and Fiber 2 Gig for $70 per month (with autopay, a temporary promotion of $15 off, and a voiceline), according to The Mobile Report.
Now, the carrier has made major tweaks to these three offerings. Its website now shows that it replaced its Fiber 500 Mbps plan with a new Fiber 300 Mbps plan that starts at $45 per month.
T-Mobile’s Fiber 1 Gig plan now starts at $60 per month. Also, while Fiber 2Gbps remains at $70 per month, a promotion is no longer needed to obtain that price.
Related: T-Mobile tests customer loyalty with another fee hike
Even though T-Mobile lowered its fiber internet pricing, there are two caveats customers should be aware of.
First, the carrier removed voice line discounts from these plans. Second, the plans come with five-year price guarantees, which opens the door for T-Mobile to hike prices whenever it sees fit.
The latest move from T-Mobile comes after it revealed in its most recent earnings report that its postpaid account churn increased by 10 basis points year over year.
During the company’s earnings call last month, Gopalan mainly attributed the higher churn to T-Mobile’s broadband business.
“Our fastest-growing business by long distance is broadband, which structurally, and we have talked about this before, has higher churn than wireless,” said Gopalan.
T-Mobile’s elevated churn comes as it falls behind its smaller broadband competitors in customer loyalty, according to a recent CableTV.com survey.
The top 5 internet providers Americans are staying loyal to:
- Starlink takes the top spot with a 91% customer loyalty score.
- Lumos comes in second place, scoring 88%.
- Google Fiber andZiply Fiber are tied in third place at 85%.
- T-Mobile trails behind at 81%.
Source: CableTV.com
“One big trend from this year’s survey is how drastically customers prefer smaller ISPs (internet service providers) to larger national ISPs,” wrote Eric Chiu, CableTV.com internet editor, in the survey release.
“This preference shows up in a variety of small or large annoyances, like trading a cable ISP’s outages and annual price hikes for a smaller fiber ISP with great reliability and flat-rate pricing,” he continued. “But in general, customers tend to love smaller providers and (at best) tolerate national ISPs.”
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T-Mobile makes an aggressive move to expand its fiber footprint
As T-Mobile works to retain customers by revamping its fiber internet plans, it has also recently announced two new joint ventures to acquire fiber companies GoNetspeed, Greenlight Networks, and i3 Broadband, according to a press release.
“These partnerships are about expanding access to high-performance fiber for more customers,” said André Almeida, chief broadband, enterprise, and emerging business officer at T-Mobile, in the press release.
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“We’ve built strong momentum in fiber, and these JVs (joint ventures) allow us to scale faster by combining leading fiber operators with T-Mobile’s brand, distribution and customer experience to meet growing demand for fast connectivity options,” he added.
During the company’s earnings call, Gopalan said these joint ventures are “well on track” and are “delivering exactly what we expected.”
Also, he revealed that T-Mobile is doubling down on expanding its fiber business to create “true equity value” rather than relying on offering customers converged internet and mobile services to do the job.
“The reason we’re doing fiber is much more because we see an equity value creation opportunity rather than the myth of convergence,” said Gopalan.
Related: Verizon CEO doubles down on removing free offers for customers
