What is T-Mobile without John Legere? (The Daily Charge, 11/18/2019)

T-Mobile CEO John Legere is set to leave the company in May. What does that mean for the company? Stayed tuned for your Daily Charge. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Daily Charge. It's Monday, November 18th. I'm Roger Cheng. And I'm Eli Blumenthal. Let's get to today's headlines. [BLANK_AUDIO] John Ledger the firebrand CEO of T Mobile is bidding a do the company announced that he would step down next May, with Chief Operating Officer and President Mike Seaver taking the reins of the company. And this is a big move considering so much of T mobile's and carrier identity is linked to legends brash and rebellious nature. Eli what do you think? So as you mentioned it's a big move. It's obviously coming at a very interesting time for T Mobile and the wireless industry. We have 5G which T Mobile plans to take nationwide and cover 200 million people on December sixth. They announced that the other week. They have obviously the Sprint merger which we've been covering. Which still right at this point is kind of in limbo, we'll see. Yeah, so it's a very interesting time to make the announcement that the CEO who's been so aligned with the company. Yep. Is going to leave not long after this deal is, in their opinion hopefully gonna close. Now I think it's clear that this company needs to address it. They were getting questions about this back at the [UNKNOWN] event just two weeks back. In addition there's all this chatter about John Legend going to [UNKNOWN] which he's officially denied, right? Yes on the call today with analysts and reporters he flat out said he's not going to [UNKNOWN]. Contrary to reports that circulated over the last week that said he was in the running and was talking to SoftBank Who has a significant stake and we work about taking over, Softbank's the company that also owns sprint. Yep. Who's obviously been working with very closely to try to get this deal across the finish line. He's not going there. Rght now. So take us through some of the changes, obviously, Mike Seaver who's been around for a while he's been around throughout this entire and carrier run of the last several years, is taking over as CEO. But there were some other personal changes? Yeah, so Mike Seaver is being bumped up from COO to CEO. Yep. Now with this move he's already president. He's going to remain president Ledger's remaining on the board. He's not going anywhere. Braxton Carter, one of Ledger's lieutenants is going also stay around at least until I believe July is when they said. And he's the chief financial officer right now. Yes. Yep. And he's hanging around. At least I believe in total lies what they said. Neville Ray, who's been the CTO is now bumped up to President of technology. What exactly that. Yeah, sure what that means. Isn't necessarily clear. Maybe he just gets more money. I'm assuming he's doing the same thing. Could be. [LAUGH] And never, by the way for additional context, he's the one that really kind of pushed out the superfast rule out there. 4G network and he's doing that now with the 5G network. He's the network guru. He's the guy who has completely redone, obviously with conjuction with other Talented members of their team. Right. Please completely redone their network and really done a very impressive job. Right. Building it up from the reputation that they had years ago to a much stronger, more viable network that is today. And so the big question here going back to legends kind of brash nature, Mike Siebert, who I've dealt with for a long time we both dealt with for. For a while he's definitely not John Legend he's a bit more buttoned up he's a bit more straight laced very smart guy but you know whenever you're going from a company that's run from a colorful character like Ledger to someone who's a bit more straight laced like Mike, like what do you think is that is that going to have a fundamental change in the company the way it is run I can't imagine it won't. Both are well known industry veterans. Right. Sievert was also at AT&T just like Ledger was. Yeah. I believe he was also at Clearwire. Microsoft for a while. Microsoft as well. Yep. Definitely different personalities between Ledger and Sievert but you know, they're talking about T-Mobile. Keeping this, whatever has been working not breaking,- Right. That.- Right. So I can't imagine they're gonna get rid of all their things like T Mobile Tuesday's are taking shots at the competition that's very much a part of the brand at this point. [LAUGH] Right. Right. It just may not be ledger doing firing those guns.>> Absolutely. elsewhere. The news today Google stadia is set to launch tomorrow, but that doesn't mean there isn't a time for last minute change of plans. This is good news though Google said last night that it is adding 10 new games to his lineup, bringing its total to 22. These are titles like NBA to K 20 and rage to for supposed to come later but now they've been moved up to the lunchtime now Eli What do you think of say what do you make of this is locking very soon these at these new titles is this just google trying to like up the ante Try to get folks to you know, give them an extra incentive to join. Very much so. I mean Google had a launch list of, I believe it was 12. 12 initially, yeah. That's an incredibly small list. And a lot of the games were older games too, right? I think the Assassin's Creed Odyssey was one of the headline games. That's a pretty old game. Right, to all these games have been around for a while. The people who are probably interested in Stadia were already playing them. Yep. On a PlayStation or a PC or an Xbox. So you gotta give people a reason to make this switch to Stadia. This makes it a little bit better but it's still. Very much an early stage. Definitely I think it feels like it arises a lot of questions, right. This is a like a system that requires an internet connection at all times, which means if you're in a dead zone, you can't play, there's no offline play. You have to pay a monthly subscription for the service, as well as full price for these games. So there's a lot of, Lot of barriers to entry here, right? Not to mention the fact that if you want to play on your Android phone, which is one of the big tenants of this platform, you got to be mindful of data caps. Yeah. Unlimited subscribers generally have about 22 and a half gigabytes of data a month. If you're playing in 4k, right? How fast is that going to go through Not going to keep an eye on. And once we get to the 5G world, I mean that that data is going to get consumed super quickly, right? Presumably so it's all the more reason to, I guess more Stay tuned to stay to talk more on that before it launches. We're definitely gonna have more of that throughout the week, so stay tuned. For Daily charge I'm Robert Cheng. And I'm [UNKNOWN] Thanks for joining us. Can't get enough, check out the daily Supercharged. Our extended post show with special features, audience Q&A and in depth reviews. Available now wherever you get your podcasts