T-Mobile US’s wild, unorthodox CEO John Legere was at it again this morning.
During a profanity-heavy presentation during which he announced a major new product initiative, Legere made an amusing accusation about his interviewer, the well-known Yahoo tech reviewer David Pogue.
We are pretty sure he was joking. At any rate Legere was announcing what he said was “the biggest thing we have done” since he took over T-Mobile US in September 2012.
Which is saying something, since over the past year or so, America’s smallest but fastest growing wireless carrier has, among other things, eliminated two-year contracts and early termination fees, introduced very cheap international roaming in its plans, and started providing unlimited, data-free access to streaming music services.
Now it will allow customers to roll over unused data from a given month, to be stored away and used at some point over the next year. In a clever nod to its millennial customer base, the new promotion is cleverly being called “Data Stash.” (“Stash is cooler,” Legere later said on a media call. “Rollover is a 1980s term.”)
T-Mobile has been offering unlimited data on many of its plans, but evidently many of its customers are still on packages with data caps.”This is a philosophical, principle-based attack on changing a stupid, arrogant industry,” Legere said.
The new data rollover initiative is clever on a number of levels. At the very least, it will make people who have joined T-Mobile recently think twice before switching to another carrier.
That said, while it is great news for consumers, it doesn’t seem to be doing much for T-Mobile’s stock price, which is languishing at its lowest levels of the year.
Legere was recently criticized for his position on net neutrality, which is pretty much the same perspective as that of every other telecom CEO. But he used the presentation to further position himself as the wireless industry’s rebel-in-chief.
Asked by Pogue whether he needs to collaborate more with rival CEOs to get favorable outcomes from regulators in Washington, Legere said no. “I’m not playing that game. I’m sure from a Washington standpoint what I am doing from an industry perspective is pretty good,” he said. “I’ll tick the fuckers [rival CEOs] off right now.”