T-Mobile's network isn't the only thing that's getting closer to matching AT&T and Verizon. Reports this week emerged stating that T-Mobile now has more retail locations than AT&T nationwide. T-Mobile has grown its retail footprint from 3,600 stores to 5,300 stores in just the last two and a half years, putting the company into second place behind Verizon for the most total retail locations. Verizon still claims 7,400 retail locations compared to 5,300 for T-Mobile, 5,200 for AT&T, and 3,900 for Sprint (whose footprint shrank during this period).
“The new store openings have dramatically improved T-Mobile’s position relative to its peers,” wrote the analysts at MoffettNathanson in a recent report on the carrier. “At the end of 2015, T-Mobile had the fewest doors of any of the Big Four (not surprising so, given its much more limited footprint). Today, the company has already passed AT&T.”
T-Mobile says it has no intention of slowing down, and will be opening stores in new markets where the company is deploying its newly obtained 700 MHz and 600 MHz spectrum.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere has stated the company is "focused on places where the network's deployed where there is no competition, that sad, little town that just has Verizon or maybe Verizon and AT&T, and they hate them both. And when we open a door in those towns, I mean, the mayor comes out, there's marching bands and people just march right into our store and move over to us. So that's the--that's kind of where we are."
Granted if T-Mobile and Sprint's
rekindled mega merger conditions are allowed to proceed, many of those stores will be closed. Analysts predict that the merger could eliminate anywhere between
20,000 and 30,000 jobs -- potentially more than Sprint even currently employees. The lion's share of those job cuts would be at redundant retail locations eliminated in the wake of the deal.