Mike Sievert in 2017 when he was serving as T-Mobile’s COO before rising to CEO in 2020. (GeekWire File Photo/Kevin Lisota)
Former T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert is hanging up his magenta hat, leaving the wireless giant’s board of directors and vice chair role effective Nov. 1.
Sievert will also leave the board’s Transaction Committee, according to a federal filing. His departure comes a year after he handed the CEO job to Srini Gopalan.
A company spokesperson said via email that the vice chair role was structured as a one-year term, adding that Sievert has “been a valued strategic advisor throughout the leadership transition, and we’re incredibly grateful for his contributions.”
T-Mobile said in the filing that his departure “is not the result of any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to its operations, policies or practices.”
Sievert joined T-Mobile in 2012 as executive vice president and chief marketing officer, the same year John Legere became CEO. He later became president and chief operating officer and was mentored by Legere before succeeding him as chief executive in 2020. He served as CEO for about five and a half years.
Sievert was a central figure in T-Mobile’s campaign to brand itself the “Un-carrier.” During his time at the company, T-Mobile grew from fewer than 30 million customers to more than 130 million by September 2025, a period that included its merger with Sprint.
Once the scrappy outsider, Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile currently ranks second among U.S. telecom companies by market capitalization, behind Verizon and ahead of AT&T.
Sievert previously worked at Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, E-Trade, IBM and Procter & Gamble.
T-Mobile is replacing Experience 2.0 with T-Mix, a lineup starting at $55 per month that lets customers spend Picks on streaming subscriptions, gaming, satellite service, and more.
T-Mobile’s new T-Mix plans let customers spend “Picks” on perks or a new phone. (Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash)
T-Mobile is introducing new wireless plans that change how customers get perks and phone deals, giving them a set number of “Picks” to spend on a new phone or an expanded menu of extras that they can swap out every 90 days.
The company says it will be the only carrier that lets customers choose which benefits come with their plan. Instead of fixed bundles of extras plus a discount on a new phone for each line, customers get a single allowance to spend on options ranging from Netflix and ESPN to Xbox Game Pass, Google’s Gemini AI and Delta SkyMiles.
One catch is that phones and perks come out of the same pool of Picks, so a family that wants a new phone on every line may have little left to put toward extras.
Allan Samson, T-Mobile’s chief marketing officer, says Picks are “essentially a form of currency.” (T-Mobile Photo)
The plans, called T-Mix, will be available in November. Existing customers can switch or keep their current plans, said Allan Samson, T-Mobile’s chief marketing officer.
The move comes as T-Mobile’s customer growth slows and new rivals emerge, including SpaceX, a current T-Mobile partner that is reportedly planning a wireless service of its own. T-Mobile’s stock is down about 26% this year, including a drop of nearly 8% on Friday after a report on SpaceX’s wireless plans.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based company has relied for years on “Un-carrier” moves — splashy changes that defy industry conventions — to capture consumer attention.
Samson described T-Mix as the latest of those moves, aimed at what the company’s research identified as a top customer complaint: paying for extras they don’t use. Picks are “essentially a form of currency,” he said. “You can use them for anything you want.”
A subscription hub: With the new plans, T-Mobile is adding a much larger menu of subscriptions in an attempt to turn its plans into a hub for streaming, music, gaming and AI services.
Along with longtime perks such as Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV, the new options include ESPN’s Unlimited streaming service, Xbox Game Pass, YouTube Premium, Apple Music and Google’s Gemini AI subscriptions.
The company says people spend far more on subscriptions than they realize. In T-Mobile’s research, customers estimated spending about $90 a month, Samson said. A separate study by C+R Research puts average spending at $219.
A big part of the idea is to consolidate that spending and let customers move among services more freely, picking up a streaming service for a new show, for example, or adding satellite coverage for a summer trip, then dropping it afterward.
Customers can make those changes every 90 days in the T-Life app. T-Mobile texts them when a 10-day change window opens, and their choices roll over if they do nothing. T-Mobile handles the switch between services in its plans, although the fine print notes that customers may need to initially cancel existing subscriptions on their own to avoid paying twice.
T-Mobile buys subscriptions below retail prices through deals it negotiates with streaming services and other partners. That lets T-Mobile include the services in its plans for less than it would cost customers to subscribe on their own.
Phones vs. perks: For consumers, one trade-off for the newfound flexibility is that phones and perks now draw from the same finite supply.
Customers who hold on to their phones or choose less-expensive models can put that value toward streaming and other extras, but a family that wants a new phone on every line may not have enough Picks to cover them.
Whether consumers end up getting more or less for their money depends largely on how many lines they have and how often they buy new phones. Smaller accounts that keep their phones are likely to come out ahead. Larger families that upgrade every line may pay more and get less, because T-Mobile is also dropping its long-standing free third line.
Samson estimated that accounts with one or two lines will pay $5 to $10 a month less than on T-Mobile’s current plans, while a five-line account might pay $10 to $15 more. Across all of its customers, he said, pricing is roughly the same.
T-Mobile says a family of three on its Loaded plan, which costs $200 a month ($2,400 a year) with AutoPay before taxes and fees, gets more than $4,320 a year in plan features and benefits, based on its own valuation.
The math behind the Picks: Customers choose from three plans, with base prices for customers on AutoPay, before taxes and fees:
Standard: $55 a month for one line, with one Pick. It’s the basic plan, with limits on high-priority data and video quality.
More: $75 a month, with two Picks, unlimited high-priority data and 4K video.
Loaded: $95 a month, with three Picks and the largest allowances for hotspot use and international data.
Adding lines adds Picks, and Picks apply to the whole account, so one Netflix subscription covers the family. Unused Picks don’t accumulate from one quarter to the next.
Most extras cost one or two Picks. Ad-free Netflix costs three, and ESPN Unlimited costs four. Phones cost Picks, too: two for an iPhone and three for an iPhone Pro, Samson said, tied up for the three-year payment plan. A four-line account on the More plan gets seven Picks, not enough for a new iPhone on every line.
T-Mobile’s three T-Mix plans, with prices, data allowances and what each perk costs in Picks. Click to enlarge. (T-Mobile Graphic)
No price guarantee: The terms say T-Mobile may change the benefits and the number of Picks each one requires at any time, with changes taking effect the following quarter. Customers who change a partner benefit outside a change window may have to pay a fee. Once a year, customers will also be asked to reselect their benefits.
The launch comes less than a week after New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a settlement with T-Mobile over its 2017 “Price Guarantee” plans, which promised customers the carrier would “never change the price you pay.”
T-Mobile raised prices on those plans by about $5 a line in 2024. It agreed to offer refunds and other options that the attorney general’s office expects to provide more than $38 million in value, and to freeze prices for affected customers until at least 2029.
Asked about price protections, Samson said T-Mix plans don’t come with a guarantee. T-Mobile can control its network costs, he said, but not what partners such as Apple and Xbox charge, although it has multiyear deals in place.
“We didn’t want to be disingenuous,” he said, adding that partner prices are set for the next couple of years but “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in 2030.”
The Un-carrier playbook: T-Mobile launched its Un-carrier campaign in 2013 by dropping two-year contracts. Samson said the company makes an Un-carrier move only when it sees a big customer pain point and believes it has something unique to offer.
T-Mobile has been testing T-Mix since Oct. 1 in 37 stores in Kansas City. Only about 70% of Picks were chosen in the store at the time of purchase, Samson said, in part because families wanted to go home and decide together, and some customers were saving Picks for phones coming out later.
Verizon lets customers add discounted streaming bundles to its plans for an extra monthly charge. Samson said the difference with T-Mix is that the benefits are included in the plan price.
Upholding the company’s tradition of jabbing at rivals, he described one competitor’s approach as “naked connectivity.” The other, he said, will “throw you a nice phone and then leave you alone. And every now and then, there’s a rate increase.”
The plans are also one of the first major consumer moves under CEO Srini Gopalan, who succeeded Mike Sievert in the role last November.
T-Mobile’s account growth has slowed this year. In the second quarter, it added a net 277,000 postpaid accounts (households and businesses that pay a monthly bill rather than prepaying for service). That was down 13% from 318,000 a year earlier.
The company reports third-quarter results Wednesday, two days after Verizon.
Samson, who joined Sprint in 2016 and stayed on after its 2020 merger with T-Mobile, became CMO earlier this year. He previously ran the company’s broadband business and was CMO of T-Mobile for Business. He said T-Mix has been his pet project since taking his current role, starting with interviews with hundreds of consumers.
Samson said it’s too early to say how T-Mix will affect the business. “Ask me in six months once I have about six months under my wings nationwide,” he said, “and then we’ll have some actuals to report.”
The HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1) was the world's first commercially available Android smartphone, released back in October 2008 with a modest 1,150 mAh battery. If you used it moderately for calls, emails, and occasional web browsing, you were lucky enough to get through the day. Fast-forward to today: my daily Android phone packs a massive 5000 mAh battery, almost five times bigger than the HTC Dream, and has an efficient 3nm processor.
T-Mobile’s Deeanne King, right, enjoying the Pacific Northwest with family. (Photo courtesy of King)
When Deeanne King came to the Pacific Northwest in 2020 — relocating from Kansas after Sprint merged with Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile — she fell in love with the region’s natural beauty. In her role as executive vice president and chief people officer, she also helps lead sustainability efforts for the telecom giant.
“The outdoors is my happy place,” King said. The region’s lakes, inland sea and trails, she added, are “a good reminder of what we’re all working to protect.”
T-Mobile has been ranked among the greenest companies in the U.S and globally. It’s making notable progress toward climate goals at a time when numerous corporations are scaling back or abandoning their carbon targets.
Keep reading to learn more about King’s sustainability journey. Her quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
What gives you the most hope for the planet?
People. Hands down. I get to work with some incredibly smart, curious, and committed people, and one thing I’ve learned is that when you put a hard problem in front of people who care, they find a way. They challenge the status quo, they try something new, they learn, and they keep going. I’ve never seen our teams walk away from a problem because it was hard.
I’m also encouraged by the growing recognition that sustainability and good business can, and should, go together. Building more efficiently, using resources more thoughtfully, and reducing waste can make a business more resilient while also being better for the planet. Those things don’t have to compete.
And I see that mindset in our employees. People want their work to matter. They want to contribute to something bigger than themselves. When you combine that sense of purpose with ingenuity and a willingness to work together, I think there’s tremendous reason for hope.
King presenting at a T-Mobile all-employee meeting. (T-Mobile Photo)
What’s one habit you’ve changed personally because of environmental concerns?
I’ve gotten much more intentional about cutting down on single-use things, and my reusable water bottle is probably the simplest example. It goes everywhere with me now.
It sounds small, but I think that’s actually the point. Once you make one change part of your routine, you start noticing other opportunities: what you throw away, what you reuse, what you buy, and what you probably didn’t need in the first place. Those small choices add up.
Coffee with any sustainability leader, past or present — who do you pick?
I’d choose Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst at Amazon. T-Mobile joined Amazon and hundreds of other companies in signing the Climate Pledge, committing to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. And there’s something Kara has said about that work that really resonates with me: “We cannot go at this alone.”
I couldn’t agree more. The biggest challenges we face aren’t going to be solved by one company, one industry, or one really smart person. We have to find common ground, share what we’re learning, and be willing to work together toward something bigger than any one of us.
I’d love to sit down with Kara and compare notes on what’s working, where we’re getting stuck, and where companies like ours can work together to move faster. And knowing me, we’d probably end up talking about people and leadership too, because ultimately, ambitious goals only become real when you have people who are willing to question how things have always been done and figure out how to get there.
What’s an underrated solution that deserves more attention?
Making sustainability practical. Sometimes we gravitate toward the giant, breakthrough idea, and we absolutely need those. But there is also enormous opportunity in doing the basics really, really well and using data to figure out where small changes can add up to a very big impact.
Take buildings. They aren’t necessarily the first thing people think about when they think about climate innovation, but managing HVAC systems more intelligently produced nearly $5 million in estimated energy savings for T-Mobile in 2025. As of 2025, we have 132 community solar projects in our portfolio, providing an estimated lifetime total savings of $60 million in energy costs. You can reduce energy use, lower costs, and do something positive for the planet.
What’s one metric you watch obsessively as a sustainability leader?
I don’t know that I would use the word obsessively, but I absolutely believe in measuring whether the work is actually making a difference. One number I’m particularly proud of is that in 2025, T-Mobile’s total emissions were 50% lower than our 2020 baseline. That’s meaningful progress, especially because our business hasn’t been standing still.
The scope of the climate challenge is daunting — how do you approach this work?
You can’t let the size of the problem become the reason you don’t start. That’s true of climate change, but honestly, it’s true of almost every really hard problem I’ve encountered in my career. When something feels enormous, I focus first on what we can control. What’s the next decision? What’s the next action? What can we make better today? Then you keep going.
I’m also a big believer in being willing to learn along the way. Take smart risks, look at the data, listen to people, adjust and keep moving.
What impact do you hope your work has in 20 years?
As a mom, I think about the world we’re handing to the next generation. Of course I want my children, and someday, their children, to inherit a healthy planet. But I also want them to inherit the belief that when something matters, you don’t wait for somebody else to fix it. You figure out what you can do, you bring people together and you get to work.
iPhone Handoff lets one phone number move automatically between two iPhones. Here’s how setup, carrier support, Apple Watch, Wallet, and eSIM switching work.
iPhone Handoff lets one phone number move automatically between two iPhones. Here’s how setup, carrier support, Apple Watch, Wallet, and eSIM switching work.
President Trump at the White House ballroom construction site in May. Microsoft, Amazon and T-Mobile have committed $20 million to the project, according to the Washington Post. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Microsoft committed $10 million to President Trump’s White House ballroom project, and Amazon and T-Mobile each chipped in $5 million, according to an internal donor list obtained by the Washington Post and reported by the newspaper Thursday morning.
The commitments are drawing scrutiny because the ballroom donations aren’t subject to campaign finance limits or disclosure requirements. The money goes through a nonprofit, the Trust for the National Mall, into a White House account the president directly controls.
Of the $333 million raised so far, the vast majority came from companies and wealthy people with interests before the federal government, the Post found, raising concerns among experts that companies could be buying influence with the administration, or feeling pressured to give.
The White House publicly named Microsoft, Amazon and T-Mobile among the ballroom’s donors last October but didn’t disclose the amounts. Other donors asked to keep their names out of it entirely, the Post found, including a subsidiary of mortgage lender Rocket, which committed $10 million weeks after a federal agency approved its acquisition of Mr. Cooper.
The Seattle-area companies have a wide range of dealings with the government as suppliers, regulated businesses and targets of federal scrutiny. Microsoft and Amazon are two of the federal government’s largest technology providers, and T-Mobile requires regulatory approval across its business, from wireless spectrum to acquisitions.
Apple and Nvidia were among the top contributors at $25 million each, according to the list of 67 donations above $10,000. Microsoft’s $10 million puts it in the next tier with Palantir and Lockheed Martin, while Amazon and T-Mobile joined Meta, Cisco and ServiceNow at $5 million.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Post that the donors are “a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals, all of whom are contributing to make the People’s House better for generations to come.”
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company didn’t have a comment beyond what has been publicly reported. We’ve contacted Amazon and T-Mobile for comment.
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