I want to share a personal anecdote here. In December 2011, while I was at eBay, I noticed that used phones were being bought mostly by people who had broken or lost their phones mid-contract—which usually lasted two years. That’s not how other markets work. People buy used cars for value and affordability, not because their new car broke down. So why that pattern with phones? Because of the two-year contract with their carrier.

I began analyzing those contracts, and from every angle, they seemed suboptimal for mobile carriers. They worked well for device manufacturers, but not for the carriers. Customers were locked in for two years, creating an inefficient tradeoff between customer acquisition costs and lifetime value.

In May 2012, I shared a manuscript with a senior friend at AT&T, titled Cellphone Subscriptions Leveraging Bill-Me-Later. Bill-Me-Later was a consumer credit service by PayPal, then owned by eBay. The idea was simple: let customers buy any phone—including used ones on eBay—and spread the cost over two years or less using Bill-Me-Later. AT&T would cover the monthly installment as long as the customer stayed with them. That essentially made the phone “free” and created a more efficient and transparent model for everyone involved. I even compared it to healthcare: imagine if medical pricing were this transparent—how much that would drive down U.S. healthcare costs.

My friend at AT&T, a respected researcher and author, was excited. He rewrote the manuscript from AT&T’s point of view and circulated it among several VPs over the course of a few months—only to be turned down at every level. Eventually, he reached the executive in charge of subsidies, who expressed interest in pursuing a similar idea—but not with eBay. That seemed like a good place to let it go. If the second-largest carrier was planning something along those lines, that still felt like a win.

Then I remembered a friend who was an executive at T-Mobile. I met with him, shared the idea, and found that they were already thinking along similar lines—working toward device-price transparency. I handed him the physical manuscript, ironically still addressed to AT&T.

Here’s where the difference lies: both companies saw the opportunity, but only one followed through. T-Mobile didn’t just adopt transparent pricing—it made it the foundation of its transformation: Uncarrier. Customers could buy a phone, take on monthly payments, and T-Mobile would cover them as long as they remained with the company.

Changing a business model is one of the hardest things a company can do—and T-Mobile pulled it off. There aren’t many examples like it.

Since then, T-Mobile has addressed customer pain points one by one. Weak signal? They’ll send you a Wi-Fi antenna—or even a cell-tower-grade one—for free. Need international calling? For just $10 a month, your entire family can call almost anywhere in the world. Traveling abroad? Roaming data is included. You can hail an Uber or Grab on your U.S. phone wherever you are. They even offered upgrade plans to ensure customers can buy the latest devices, even when installments are pending for their earlier devices.

Today, T-Mobile is worth more than both AT&T and Verizon. Instead of being acquired by AT&T, it ended up acquiring Sprint.

Would T-Mobile have made such bold moves if it were already winning? I’ll leave you with that question—and would love to hear your thoughts.