Your Mom & Analysts Don't Want You Hanging with that T-Mo Crowd

The mobile blogs are all covering a Dow Jones Newswires story today about analysts' concerns that T-Mobile USA is flirting with "troublemakers" (Fierce's characterization) with low credit scores in their interest to drive subscriber growth. Frankly the article is all over the place...and it's pretty unclear whether the alleged deterioration in credit standards is related to post-paid (contract) customers or their aggressive promotion of Flex Pay, which is their pre-paid solution. Btw, if it's the latter, why should anyone be concerned? But overall I love the fact that T-Mo is, or is perceived to be, courting a risky, younger, less financially stable crowd...aka the cool kids. In my experience these subscribers are avid consumers and evangelists of mobile entertainment content, substantially over-indexing in the acquisition of mobile games, tones and graphics. I say, you go T-Mo!...grab all the high schoolers, college kids, rebels, pierced & tattooed goths, gangstas, wangstas, bikers and disgraced ibankers you can with your cheap plans and cool devices, then offer them access to the web & apps and I wager you'll be well positioned to be a data ARPU baller. Oh yeah, and all those nerdy analyst-types, they'll be your...