If a Network Entrant Arrives, Holistic Experience Data Decides Who Keeps the Customer

Investors and AT&T's chief executive have both framed the episode as a contest over towers and spectrum. However the debate must also ask about the assets an entrant can buy, and that the asset an entrant cannot buy – customer data. Being able to access this and then manage the customer, experience and commercially, decides which provider keeps and wins the base. A communications service provider that measures experience only from the network side will see an entrant's gains after the churn has happened.

The consensus reading prices a network contest

John Stankey told investors on the October 21 earnings call not to "over rotate" on a single block of low-band spectrum, and he noted that AT&T holds six to eight such blocks in a typical metro. He added that reaching the performance customers expect "takes a lot of years and a huge level of investment," and that how a network performs indoors is "extremely important.” On the precedent of Dish's attempt to build a fourth national network, he declined to speak for it and suggested asking Dish's Charlie Ergen "what it took and how many years and complications that come up." Dish went on to sell most of its spectrum in 2025.

Stankey's point holds in that it is capital intensive and extremely difficult to compete in the U.S. market with the big players. But it also holds as far as it reaches. Networks take years to build, and Dish shows that a funded entrant can still stop short of finishing. The case carries a premise, though: that the threat begins when the network is complete.

Switching and staying intent forms in the network and beyond

Deloitte's 2026 telecommunications outlook finds that 77 percent of telecom consumers feel no loyalty to their provider. A base with that profile reprices itself against any credible alternative, and a credible alternative needs coverage only where customers already feel let down. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has argued exactly that, saying SpaceX can win customers from the three national providers in poor-coverage areas and during natural disasters. She’s not entirely wrong, with almost 40 percent of U.S. customers switching due to poor connectivity.

But it goes beyond the network. MCE Systems’ business-intelligence team estimates that 31 million U.S. postpaid customers churn each year across the entire U.S. market, with about one million of them for device-related reasons. 

MCE Systems' research finds that one in three CSP customers will have a device-side issue within a two-year period, which lowers the provider's NPS by 19 points, and that an unresolved issue lowers it by 36.  At 100 million subs, that pattern implies millions of customers will face an issue device issues over their co ntractual period, each a moment when the customer judges the provider. Moreover, nearly 80 percent of customers also rely on their providers for help with device-side issues.

When commercial opportunities are factored in, provider NPS rises by six points when customers receive personalized, commercial offers during care and service situations.

The value of mobile device insights

The above loyalty, device care and experience figures support a claim that none of them makes alone: a CSP's churn exposure to a new entrant challenging the status quo concentrates in moments of failed overall experience (network and device), and the CSP's instruments for detecting those moments are partial. 

Let’s start with network: Headline network indicators summarize performance across cells and time, while a customer experiences one handset, in one room, at one moment. Carriers already have substantial subscriber-level telemetry, including measurements that reveal indoor performance problems. The gap is that these measurements do not necessarily provide a continuous, complete picture of the customer’s experience across cellular, Wi-Fi, the handset and the application. Stankey’s emphasis on indoor performance underscores why that fuller context matters, but providers are missing it.

For resolving technical mobile issues, providers are limited in self-service, tending to put the onus on the customer to navigate knowledgebases to resolve or a virtual agent, which usually routes to the call center. In call centers or retail stores, reps struggle to resolve the issue in a timely manner, frustrating the customer.

If we take it one step beyond the obvious troubleshooting and maintenance use cases, accessing the device data can inform commercial and marketing campaigns. These include upgrade or trade-in readiness, convergence opportunities with naked mobile customers facing repeated poor wifi experiences and other upsells related to mobile.

Given that an entrant like Starlink does not subsidize devices, the mobile device is an advantageous data point that can be captured and used to evaluate and improve customer’s experience and open commercial opportunities.

Years of build time double as years to measure

If entry takes years, as Stanket argues, those years give a CSP time to build the experience view the entrant lacks. MCE Systems captures those valuable experience insights on the device through over 120 signals, including network experience, battery health, storage and app performance, as the customer meets them. Capturing this device intelligence and levergaging them as part of churn and propensity models can yield $35 million in first-year churn savings with retained customers. Device-related care calls to support can also be reduced by 30 percent.

The market has priced SpaceX's reported talks as a threat to network economics, and Stankey has answered at the same level. Where the relationship deserves the same scrutiny, because contesting it is not only about spectrum or towers. Learn more about how we help win the customer experience mce.systems.