T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert. Source: T-Mobile US

T-Mobile US strayed from the script penned by its rivals AT&T and Verizon by actually boosting its financial expectations for the rest of the year despite a half-billion-dollar charge it will be taking tied to the recent financial settlement of a penetrating cybersecurity attack.

Backed by strong subscriber growth, T-Mobile US posted robust second-quarter service revenues, but a dip in equipment sales dropped overall revenues by just over 1% compared to the same quarter last year. Net income also dipped year over year due to costs associated with de-commissioning assets from its Sprint acquisition.

However, T-Mobile US’ management boosted its operating guidance for the rest of the year, including increased revenues due to stronger than expected customer growth. This was in contrast to rivals AT&T and Verizon, which both expressed second-half concerns tied to recessionary challenges.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert also brushed aside tardy customer payment concerns that both AT&T and Verizon said they expect will increase as the year progresses.

“One of the things that makes us different than our competitors in this space is we have a long history and a deep confidence at dealing with customers who have variable economic circumstances,” Sievert said, according to transcripts of the call. “And so it’s not new for us that some customers are stressed financially. We know how to work with them on that front and you have seen our bad debt levels return to more historic rates.”

T-Mobile US also slightly boosted its planned capex spend for the year, stating it will now invest between $13.5 billion and $13.7 billion for the full year. That is an increase of $250 million, which CFO Peter Osvaldik said was tied to its 5G deployment and bolstering its network to deal with strong adoption of its fixed-wireless broadband service.

T-Mobile US was sitting on 320 million people covered by its low-band network, with its higher-capacity mid-band network covering 235 million people at the end of the quarter. It expects that higher-speed network to cover 260 million people by the end of the year.

Sievert also tackled T-Mobile US’ recent settlement of a class-action lawsuit tied to a cybersecurity breach of its internal records that one analyst called “the largest carrier breach on record.” The carrier last week agreed to pay $350 million to compensate consumers hit by the breach and also said it will spend $150 million on data security over the next 18 months.

“We always knew that there would unfortunately be financial consequences from this attack and we were pleased to recently reach settlements that will resolve the class actions and most of the consumer claims,” Sievert said. “Together, we believe these settlements will represent the biggest component of those impacts. These costs were contemplated in our financial guidance and the amounts are consistent with precedents we have seen in other similar agreements. We are now focused on moving forward as we continue to invest in and enhance our company’s cybersecurity.”

One area T-Mobile US remains quiet on is its expectations for services like mobile edge compute (MEC) and IoT. CTO Peter Osvaldik said the carrier has not yet built in any guidance toward those services as it’s still not sure how it will approach the market.

“While we are best positioned to capture it, it wasn’t something that we built into the plan when we did analyst day targets because it was too early,” Osvaldik said. “We didn’t want to make the plan with something that we didn’t have a good view and a road map to how to get the growth, but we are seeing the capitalization of that. So that is all upside, potential upside to the plan, very excited about that.”

T-Mobile earlier in the quarter looped Ericsson, Nokia, and Dell Technologies into the carrier’s 5G Advanced Network Solutions plan. This is a selection of 5G network and mobile edge computing (MEC) services targeted at enterprise and government customers.

T-Mobile US is also pondering what to do with wireline assets it acquired when it bought Sprint. That multi-billion-dollar business included global MPLS and dedicated internet access with service in more than 155 countries; global SIP trunking and SIP toll-free voice services; a unified communications suite, including a workplace-as-a-service platform; managed network and security solutions; web-based network management tools; and wireless and wireline access options.

However, Sievert said those assets are no longer core to the carrier’s plans.

“You may have seen we made some announcements that we are no longer using that asset to support our wireless business,” Sievert explained. “We are obviously conducting a review as to the best way to manage that asset. It’s a terrific product with a deep, deep legacy in our company and it’s important that we make the right decisions there for the long haul, taking into account how the market has changed over time.”