T-Mobile has lost a major ranking amid increased competition in the telecommunications market.
Over the past year, T-Mobile has struggled with customer retention as AT&T and Verizon have ramped up promotions, discounts, and, more recently, lower-priced phone plans to lure price-conscious consumers.
Cable operators have also become a growing threat as they roll out bundled phone, internet and cable TV deals to attract customers. For instance, in the first quarter of 2026, Spectrum added 406,000 new wireless lines, while Comcast gained 448,000, according to their latest earnings reports.
Against this backdrop, and amid recent phone plan changes and price increases, T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Peter Osvaldik said on an earnings call in July that the company expects its postpaid phone churn (the percentage of postpaid phone customers who ended their service) to be temporarily “elevated.”
T-Mobile suffers stock downgrade amid rising competition
As T-Mobile faces competitive headwinds, Wolfe Research has downgraded its outlook for the carrier’s stock performance, according to an analyst note unveiled in a recent Investing.com report.
Wolfe Research lowered the stock’s rating from outperform, which indicates a stock will perform slightly better than the overall market, to peer perform, which suggests it will perform at the same level as other businesses in its industry.
In the analyst note, Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino expects T-Mobile’s revenue growth to be negatively impacted by mounting competitive pressures and recent investments, which will likely result in spending exceeding the $20 billion in flexible capacity mentioned in its long-term guidance.
“Long-term revenue growth forecast risk tilts negatively as competition expands in T-Mo’s core,” said Supino. “Broadband and 6G investments could dampen capital returns and pressure leverage.”
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The firm expects T-Mobile to face sluggish ARPU (average revenue per user) growth after it discontinued several legacy wireless plans that launched almost 15 years ago. This change resulted in customers on these plans being automatically moved to higher-priced ones.
Wolfe Research also predicts that Verizon and AT&T will grow rapidly and could even potentially match T-Mobile’s performance within the next four years, another reason for the downgrade in rating.
Supino also raised red flags around T-Mobile’s recent leadership departures. For example, after 21 years with the company, Callie Field stepped down as president of T-Mobile’s business group in September last year.
More recently, Mike Katz left his position as T-Mobile’s chief business and product officer in July after 28 years and will serve as a strategic advisor at the company through December.
Additionally, Supino raised concerns about reports that T-Mobile may merge with its parent company, Deutsche Telekom. However, this deal has allegedly been stalled due to worries from the carrier’s U.S. executives about potential regulatory issues, according to an Investing.com report in July.
Supino said that the recent departures and potential merger spark questions about T-Mobile’s alignment of interests.
T-Mobile faces a looming threat from SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile
Concerns over T-Mobile’s ability to weather intensifying competition come at a time when SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile, which the carrier currently partners with to offer T-Satellite direct-to-cell service, is planning to build its own terrestrial network.
This will be powered by its satellites and smaller terrestrial ground stations, which it plans to build.
SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said during an earnings call on Aug. 4 that the company will begin launching its next-generation Starlink Mobile V2 satellites in 2027.
These new satellites are built to provide 5G speeds from space, with 100 times the data density of Starlink’s first-generation V1 satellites. That added capacity means each satellite can handle up to 20 times more traffic.
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For Starlink Mobile customers, that will translate into faster and more dependable service for browsing the internet, running data-heavy apps, streaming and making calls, with fewer service disruptions.
Shotwell said she believes Starlink Mobile could draw customers away from T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon with its upcoming terrestrial network.
“I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” she said. “We will eliminate dead zones leveraging basically the satellites in orbit.”
In an analyst note in July, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams warned that if SpaceX plans to offer terrestrial mobile service, it could significantly disrupt the wireless industry, especially if it doesn’t reach an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) agreement with T-Mobile, AT&T or Verizon, according to a MarketWatch report.
“Any entry of SpaceX could be highly bearish for the wireless industry,” said Williams. “As such, we are hopeful but not convinced that no carrier will budge and cave on an MVNO agreement.”
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