T-Mobile profits under pressure

T-MOBILE MAY BE Germany’s biggest mobile operator but it ranks a distant fourth in the USA behind AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Delivering new subscribers in the US is the rationale behind the company’s long-standing sponsorship of the NBA, a relationship also backed up by a $multi-million activation campaign. Yet in the first half of 2011 T-Mobile USA lost 663,000 subscribers in an environment it described as presenting “great challenges.” The company announced in March that it had agreed a $39bn sale to AT&T pending regulatory approval. Paradoxically, the loss of customers makes the deal more likely to go through although AT&T increasingly looks to have paid top dollar. The NBA sponsorship expires this year although the company has separately agreed deals with Miami Heat and the Rookie Challenge tournament.