T-Mobile officially becomes #3 US carrier, Sprint CEO says company ‘now focused on customers, not rankings’

In case you didn’t notice (which is basically no one at this point, thanks to the more-than-loud John Legere), T-Mobile has tried to be as disruptive as possible over the last couple years. And now, Sprint, which has long been the third-largest mobile carrier in the United States, is admitting defeat. It seems T-Mobile’s tactics are working, and Sprint’s first fiscal quarter report released today shows that its 56.8 million subscribers are just shy of the 58.9 million that T-Mobile reported it had last month.

Legere took to Twitter earlier this morning to celebrate the news, although the company has been unofficially claiming its spot as the third largest carrier in the US for quite some time now. “Now that it’s official,” Legere says, “how about we focus on why T-Mobile is succeeding?” And it seems that Legere firmly believes that the company’s successes are largely thanks to its “un-carrier” revamps to the company’s services — evidence that the carrier is actually “listening to customers” unlike its competitors.

Marcelo Claure, Sprint’s CEO, replied to Legere, saying that the company deserves credit and respect for what it has accomplished. He goes on to congratulate Legere and suggests that Sprint has heard from customers and will be changing its ways. “Now focused on customers not rankings,” the CEO said:

[tweet https://twitter.com/marceloclaure/status/628581236366163968 align=”center”]

In all, it seems as if T-Mobile is doing at least some things right. A couple of weeks ago, the company announced that it was introducing a new platform called “Advanced Messaging” which brings many of the features commonly found in most modern messaging apps. And just last week, T-Mobile announced that it was adding Apple Music to its Music Freedom offerings, as well as offering the next iPhone (which hasn’t been announced) for free to anyone who buys an iPhone 6 through Jump on Demand over the next couple of months.