T-Mobile almost always runs some variation of promotions that hook customers up with free lines. Usually, the company requires you to activate one or two paid lines to get a free one. In that sense, you do pay something, but these offers are appreciated by customers who have multiple phones or many members in their households.
Turns out, these promotions aren’t just a way for T-Mobile to get you to pay for lines you might otherwise not open.
According to Jon Freier, President of Consumer Group at T-Mobile, the free lines aren’t offered to get more people to switch to the carrier. The company uses free lines as a retention tactic.
Per Freier, this is a carefully thought-out promotion, targeted very effectively. It’s employed to make customers who are contemplating taking all their lines to another carrier stay for one to three years, or even more.
If we can get a customer that might be taking an entire account away to rethink that decision and stay perhaps 1, 2, 3, maybe even some number of years longer than that as a result of a free line, that’s great for us. Â
–Jon Freier, President of Consumer Group at T-Mobile, September 2025
So while it might appear that T-Mobile is foregoing revenue, using free lines as bait helps it generate a lot of financial value in the long term.
On top of that, since T-Mobile offers service beyond mobile plans, such offers allow it to deepen its relationship with customers and get them to sign up for more products and services, such as 5G internet.
What T-Mobile is doing is in no way shady. It still serves as a reminder that anything a business does puts its interest before yours.
Carriers often offer deals and discounts to disgruntled customers to keep them from switching. Customers, on the other hand, have an inherent dislike for being tied down to a company. So while a free line doesn’t bind you to T-Mobile the same way, say, a free phone would, you might want to not lose sight of the bigger picture when taking advantage of the next free line offer.
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