Hello and welcome to Modern CEO ! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company . If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
When I was a tech reporter in the early and mid-2000s, T-Mobile was the runt of the telecom litter. The carrier was one of the smallest and arguably the scrappiest player, embracing its challenger status by marketing itself starting in 2013 as “the un-carrier” as it rolled out streamlined wireless service plans aimed at grabbing share from bigger rivals.
Thanks in part to its 2020 merger with Sprint, T-Mobile is no longer the little guy. Last week, the company announced stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings, raised profitability and cash flow guidance, and said it now expects to add approximately 1.0 million postpaid accounts in 2026. The company reported total revenue of $88.3 billion in 2025, up 8.5% annually, and ended last year with 142.4 million customers across all its services. T-Mobile’s current market capitalization is about $167 billion, behind Verizon at about $186 billion but ahead of AT&T at roughly $144 billion.
Spunky at scale
But Srini Gopalan, who became CEO of T-Mobile a year ago after an eight-month stint as chief operating officer, says the company has no intention of shedding its spunky mentality—or its quest for growth—despite its scale. In fact, he says, after five years of merger integration and network improvements, “this is the right time for us to reignite that thing which we will hold constant, which is our culture, which is ‘the un-carrier.’”
For Gopalan, that means “disruption for the sake of the customer” and “putting our front line and our people first.” He’s expanding a program called Frontline Connect, in which T-Mobile leaders spend two days in a retail store or care center, previously for vice presidents and above, to include leaders at the director level and up. Executive stock-based compensation is contingent upon an exec’s personal commitment to the front line and completion of the program. He’s also announced a new, onetime performance-based $12,000 stock grant for every eligible employee, starting in January 2027.
Spotting new growth opportunities
The company continues to roll out new pricing plans and offers. T-Mix, piloted in October and launching broadly this month, lets customers mix and match add-on services or “picks” such as streaming services or phone upgrades, and they can switch picks four times a year rather than annually.
Gopalan aspires to growth beyond traditional wireless plans. He sees opportunities to sell more home broadband services and to push further into the business-to-business segment. He also sees promise in financial services, pointing to a credit card T-Mobile has issued with Capital One.
The CEO’s shorthand for the culture he wants to nurture is “unmistakably T-Mobile.” He defines it this way: “To me, it is an obsession with the customer, an obsession with the front line, but done with a twinkle in your eye, done in a cheeky, irreverent manner, done in a surprising and memorable manner.”
Connection issues
Competitors say T-Mobile’s irreverence goes too far. Last year, for example, AT&T sued T-Mobile over its “Easy Switch” feature, an AI -powered tool that asked rivals’ customers to share their logins and passwords in order to create a personalized wireless offer. AT&T said T-Mobile used those customer credentials to scrape data, and it secured an injunction in a federal court barring parts of the original Easy Switch feature.
AT&T has since filed a new complaint alleging that T-Mobile’s “Switching Made Easy” plan, which promises to let customers change carriers in 15 minutes, is misleading. “T-Mo has been playing fast and loose with the truth for so long, they’ve forgotten what it is like to be the adult in the room,” an AT&T spokesperson says. “We’re going to keep calling it like we see it, because we think consumers and the courts know the difference between right and wrong.”
T-Mobile maintains that its tool is aimed at helping consumers. “[AT&T’s] CEO is talking about how AI agents can help customers ‘get insight as to what works for them,’” a spokesperson said. “We thought so too, and that’s why we built Easy Switch. Customers deserve simple ways to understand their options and choose what’s best for them. We continue to welcome collaboration with AT&T and others to make that easier, even when customers choose to switch.”
The challenger becomes the challenged
Meanwhile, investors are worried that the challenger may become the challenged. In early October, the day after Elon Musk’s Starlink agreed to acquire cellular spectrum licenses in a bid to build a national wireless network, shares of T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T all fell at least 8%.
When I ask Gopalan if he’d rather compete against other telecom companies or Musk’s Starlink, he seems to shrug off the threat. “Bring them on. From our perspective, we love competition. We think it makes the industry better. It forces us to be better,” he says. On Starlink specifically, he says: “They may build a network. It’s hard to tell because in the last six months they’ve said a few different things. If they do, it’s going to take a long time.”
He says T-Mobile, meanwhile, will continue to invest in its network and employees. “We’re going to love our front line more than we’ve ever loved them before because that is part of our secret sauce,” he says. “That combination of things is our moat. People launch whatever they want, but that’s [what] we’ll focus on.”
Modern CEO of the year
Modern CEO is seeking nominations for the 2026 Modern CEO of the Year. If you or a CEO you know has had an exceptional year driving innovation, transforming a business, or futureproofing a company, please share their story via this form . The deadline for submissions is December 4, and the CEO or CEOs of the year will be unveiled on December 28.
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