Metro PCS 2009 Annual Report Download - page 44

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material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results. From time to time, we evaluate
our products, service offerings and the demands of our target customers and may, as a result, amend, change,
discontinue or adjust our products, service offerings or initiate or offer new permanent, trial or promotional product
or service offerings. These new or changed product and service offerings may not succeed in the long term or prove
to be profitable. These new or changed product and service offerings may result in reduced revenues, increased
expenses, and other adverse financial or operational consequences, which could have a material adverse effect on
our business, financial condition and operating results.
The continuing consolidation in the wireless industry through mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures is
creating increased competition and marketing initiatives.
The recent joint ventures, mergers and strategic alliances in the wireless industry have resulted in, and if the trend
continues, will continue to foster, larger competitors competing for a limited number of customers. With the
increased competition and with the effect of the aggregate penetration of wireless services in all markets, which has
made it more difficult to attract and retain customers, our operating results could be adversely affected by such
larger competitors with greater means to compete and our ability to grow may be hindered. Many of our
competitors with greater access to capital and production and distribution resources also have entered into or may
enter into exclusive deals with vendors and suppliers, including handset vendors, wireless application developers
and content providers. As handset, application, and content selection and pricing are increasingly important to
customers, the lack of availability to us of some of the latest and most popular handsets, applications, and content,
whether as a result of exclusive dealings or volume discounting, could put us at a significant competitive
disadvantage and could make it more difficult for us to attract and retain our customers. Similarly, we believe we
pay more, on average, than other national carriers for our handsets and if this continues, we could be forced to
further subsidize the price of our handsets and pay higher sales commissions on the sale or upgrade of handsets,
which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results.
We may face increasing competitive pricing and service bundling, which could adversely impact our ability to
attract and retain customers and the profitability of our services.
The competitive pressures of the wireless telecommunications industry have caused, and may continue to cause,
other carriers to offer unlimited service plans or service plans with increasingly large bundles of minutes of use or
unlimited use at increasingly lower prices or fixed monthly prices on a national coverage basis. All of our national
wireless broadband mobile competitors and certain of our regional competitors and MVNOs currently are offering
unlimited fixed-rate service plans in the markets where we operate and plan to operate and this may cause other
wireless competitors to offer unlimited fixed-rate service plans as well. Since we primarily serve major metropolitan
areas where the national wireless broadband mobile carriers and MVNOs are also offering services and we believe
the overall post-paid market is experiencing slowing growth, we anticipate more competition in the paid-in-advance
sector of the wireless broadband mobile industry, which may subject us to greater commercial disadvantages.
Further, market prices for wireless broadband mobile services in general, and for fixed-price, unlimited use of paid-
in-advance services in particular, have declined over time and we anticipate will continue to decline with increased
competition, including competition from carriers and MVNOs. Moreover, certain carriers we compete against, or
may compete against in the future, offer additional services, such as wireline phone service, cable or satellite
television, media and Internet, and are capable of bundling their wireless services with these other services in a
package of services that we may not be able to duplicate at competitive prices. In response to all the competitive
offerings in the marketplace and falling market prices, we have added, and in the future may be required to add
additional select features to our existing service plans in our metropolitan areas, change areas included in our
roaming, long-distance and other products and services, and change our service plans. We may also consider
additional targeted promotional activities and reduced pricing as well as reducing the extent to which we pass
through to customers various regulatory fees we have to pay and subsidizing the cost of handsets or increasing
commission payments to our indirect dealers as we evaluate and respond to the competitive environment going
forward. As a result, we expect that increased competition may result in more competitive pricing, slower growth,
higher costs and increased churn of our customer base, as well as the possibility of having to change our service
plans in response to customer demands, preferences and demographic trends, increase our handset subsidies, and
increase our dealer payments, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and
operating results. Failure to respond timely to competition and marketing strategies could reduce revenue, market
share and net income, which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating
results.