T-Mobile

T-Mobile raised 2025 guidance to 7.2-7.4 million total postpaid net additions, up from prior guidance of 6.1-6.4 million, including 3.3 million postpaid phone adds. The increase reflects successful integration of acquired assets: 3.3 million postpaid phone customers from UScellular in Q3 2025, plus 852,000 fiber customers from Metronet and Lumos acquisitions. This is slime mold behavior—individual amoebae aggregate into a unified organism when environmental conditions trigger coordination. T-Mobile doesn't grow primarily through organic customer acquisition. It grows by absorbing smaller organisms, integrating their subscriber bases and infrastructure into the parent network, then extracting efficiencies the standalone entities couldn't access. The Sprint merger in 2020 added 30+ million customers. The UScellular deal added another 3.3 million. The fiber joint ventures with EQT and KKR provide access to 2.3 million fiber-passed locations, targeting 12-15 million by 2030.

The company delivered over 1 million postpaid phone net additions in Q3 2025, the best Q3 result in over a decade, with best-ever postpaid net account additions and total postpaid adds. Service revenues hit $17.4B in Q2 2025, up 6% year-over-year, with postpaid service revenues up 9%. Net income increased 10% to $3.2 billion with diluted EPS up 14% to $2.84. These aren't startup growth metrics. These are mature organism metrics showing that integration drives value. The biology: when organisms merge, the combined entity either achieves synergies that justify the merger costs, or it fragments under metabolic stress. T-Mobile demonstrates the former. Every acquired customer gets migrated to T-Mobile's network, every redundant cell site gets decommissioned, every overlapping back-office function gets consolidated. The company won all five overall network experience categories from Opensignal for the third straight year, including download/upload speed, games, video, and live video experience.

Broadband represents the second growth engine. T-Mobile added 560,000 total broadband net additions in Q3 2025, up 34% year-over-year, including 506,000 5G broadband subscribers (up 22%) and 54,000 fiber additions. The fiber strategy mirrors habitat expansion: T-Mobile historically owned wireless spectrum and cell towers. Now it's acquiring fiber infrastructure to compete in fixed broadband, previously dominated by cable companies. The company raised full-year 2025 guidance to $33.7-33.9B core adjusted EBITDA and $17.8-18.0B adjusted free cash flow. These cash flows fund further acquisitions, creating a positive feedback loop: acquisitions generate cash, cash funds more acquisitions, scale improves unit economics, improved economics justify higher valuations for future deals. This is exponential growth through aggregation, not organic expansion.