The Gigaom interview: T-Mobile’s John Legere on the myth of mobile data scarcity

It’s fair to say that since John Legere became CEO of T-Mobile US nearly two years ago, the US mobile industry has changed a lot. Not only has T-Mobile triggered some big shifts in how mobile devices and service plans are sold, Legere has also injected a lot of excitement into a normally staid mobile market.

As to whether T-Mobile questions the notion that mobile data capacity is a rare commodity that has to be metered and meted out sparingly, Legere said: “I do believe there have been artificial barriers and scarcity put up by the duopolists.”

Part of the reason is pure capitalism, he thinks. AT&T and Verizon want to maximize the return on their investments, so they charge as much as they can for data. By preserving the illusion that data is a limited resource, they can justify such high rates. Consequently, when T-Mobile offers lower rates for data, people assume that T-Mobile is vastly underpricing that resource.

Legere and his CTO Neville Ray believe that their competitors are also using the notion of scarcity as a crutch when they should actually be investing more in their networks. While T-Mobile does offer cheaper individual smartphone data plans than its competitors, Legere pointed out that T-Mobile hasn’t embarked on a quest to commoditize data or to start a price war in the US mobile market.