- The new title comes as former COO Srini Gopalan took over as CEO just over a month ago
- Freier has been with T-Mobile for more than 25 years
- As head of the Consumer Group, Freier delivered many quarters of “monster” growth
T-Mobile named Jon Freier as its new chief operating officer (COO), effective December 5.
T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan noted Freier's new title near the beginning of a presentation at the UBS investor conference in New York City Tuesday morning. The carrier also reported the change in a new SEC filing today.
Freier, 50, has served as president of the T-Mobile Consumer Group since 2021, but he’s been with T-Mobile for more than 25 years. He first joined the company at the beginning of 1994 when it was known as Western Wireless. It later became Voicestream, which was acquired by Deutsche Telekom in 2001 and rebranded as T-Mobile USA.
During a Wells Fargo conference last month, Freier noted that the fourth quarter is always a competitive time – and this is his 32nd fourth quarter in the wireless business.
4th quarter folly
The holiday season is a time for many “headline” offers, like the 4-lines-for-$100 offer that Verizon is now advertising. That's the same kind of deal that T-Mobile has offered from time to time over the last 10 years or so.
But the majority of customers that are porting into T-Mobile are selecting premium plans, Freier said, and he’s not overly concerned about the competitive environment right now.
“When I look at the overall competitiveness, it's nothing that I'm concerned about. It's vibrant. The competitive environment is always vibrant in this space,” he said. “But there's nothing that I'm concerned about in terms of what I'm seeing today and nothing that I would be concerned about in terms of what I'm seeing in the future for the balance of the quarter.”
According to Recon Analytics founder and analyst Roger Entner, Freier embodies the “un-carrier” spirit like nobody else at T-Mobile.
“The reward for good work is more work. Under Jon’s leadership the consumer organization has delivered monster quarters one after the other,” he told Fierce.
From COO to … CEO?
T-Mobile followers will recall that former CEO Mike Sievert and current CEO Gopalan held the COO title before they assumed the top job. Is that going to be the case for Freier as well some day?
“The COO is traditionally next in line in terms of succession but with Srini Gopalan just taking over, this is way too early to read this in the tea leaves,” Entner said. “T-Mobile has quite a number of excellent senior executives that could succeed Srini, but Srini isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”