00:00 Speaker A

For today's Power Play, I had the chance to sit down with T-Mobile CEO and Starbucks board member Mike Sievert. Here's what stood out to me. First, Sievert pushed back on a recent report that he would be leaving the CEO role early, plus T-Mobile confirmed the launch date of its new Starlink satellite service called, uh, appropriately T-Satellite. Here's what he had to say.

00:28 Mike Sievert

That report was a bit overblown. And so they got a lot of things about it wrong, including the idea that anybody's made any decisions about leaving anytime soon. But they didn't get wrong one thing, which is yes, we did recruit Srini with the idea of succession planning in mind. And I would tell you that any business should be thinking about these things. That's not bad news, that's good news. You know, every big move I make in the people arena is about making sure that the secret sauce of this company is here for the long run and will outlive any of us. And bringing Srini on was a part of that story. He is a fantastic leader that turned around a major German operation as CEO, and he's already adding great value here. But that is not to say that there's been any decision by me or anyone else about me stepping away anytime soon.

01:43 Speaker A

T-Satellite news, uh, it's supposed to launch commercially July 23rd. What is this service? What will it let you do?

01:54 Mike Sievert

Well, it's the largest satellite to cellular network in the world. And we've been talking about this future for almost three years now when we first unveiled it from Starbase in Texas in August of 2022. Back then it was a tech alliance that we had a dream of inventing a technology that meant one simple thing. If you can see the sky, you're connected. This is the end of dead zones. And you know there's 500,000 square miles in this country that are not reached by any cellular network, not AT&T, not Verizon. And so now, you know, this is about bringing that service to the American public and we're opening the doors to everyone. T-Mobile customers get it for free on some plans, but anybody, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon doesn't matter. Anybody can have it for just $10 a month. It's built in to our um experience beyond plan, which is our in our most popular line of plans to Go 5G next, our previous flagship plan. And for everyone else, it's just 10 bucks a month. And think about the peace of mind of being reachable because, you know, the way this works is it works with the phone you already have by and large. Um and it connects automatically. This is very different from anything that's come before. So you don't know if you've fallen off the terrestrial network and it won't matter because your phone will automatically connect to the satellite without you doing a video game of trying to connect. And that way you're reachable. And we found in the beta with over a million users that over two-thirds of the messages were actually inbound messages from others trying to reach you when you're out in the wild.

04:11 Speaker A

Recently Mike, uh, T-Mobile, um, launched a five-year price lock, um, for its its phone plans. Definitely I think, uh, surprised a few folks in industry, uh, shook up in the industry. What have been some of your learnings since the launch?

04:37 Mike Sievert

Well, you know, people are concerned and there's a lot of uncertainty out there in the world. Prices are up in everything, they're up in telecom as well. Um, and they want some assurance from the value leader, which is T-Mobile, that we're going to have their back. And value comes in multiple forms. You know, one form is the price you pay. And now the price you pay won't change for five years.

05:10 Speaker A

Why are phone plans so high?

05:16 Mike Sievert

Well, I I I would say it the other way, which is, why haven't they risen? In real dollars, you pay the same amount now you did in 2019 for phone service on average, but you're consuming, uh, three times more data at four times the speed. That's the 5G dividend. The American consumer, not T-Mobile customers, the American consumer is consuming three times more data at four times the speed for the same price in real dollars. Name another industry that's delivering that kind of value.