T-Mobile CEO John Legere amped up his war on the wireless carrier industry on Wednesday — and wireless giant AT&T in particular.
Two days after being booted from an AT&T party at the Consumer Electronics Show here, T-Mobile’s colorful chief exec delivered a lively, profanity-laced talk that bashed his rivals as much as it pumped his own brand.
As expected, much of it centered on contracts — the linchpin of T-Mobile’s recent marketing efforts.
“We are either going to take over this whole industry … or these bastards are going to change,” Legere told a packed audience at the Venetian Hotel. “Either way, it doesn’t make a god-damned difference to me.”
Pacing the stage with a can of Red Bull in hand, Legere smiled and said: “I am going to love watching the peckers scream and cry.”
It was a riveting performance even for Legere, who has been working to position T-Mobile over the last year as the “uncarrier” network.
To do this, T-Mobile has lined up initiatives designed to draw customers away from rivals, including plans that let people upgrade at any time.
At the event, Legere upped the ante by promising to pay as much as $350 in early termination fees AT&T, Sprint or Verizon charge customers jumping to T-Mobile.
Getting booted from the AT&T party on Monday night only served to burnish Legere’s image as a maverick.
At Wednesday’s event, the CEO played up the incident, joking that it got him a story in The Post, right next to disgraced former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
David Hasselhoff could have been the auto industry’s frontman at CES.
Hasselhoff’s “Knight Rider” character drove around in a talking car. The vehicle was a fantasy in the 1980s, when the show aired. But to anyone walking around the auto floor at CES this week, it’s clear that fiction is meeting reality.
Carmakers from BMW to Hyundai announced features that will let cars drive themselves, take vocal instructions and start their engines without anyone at the wheel.
Hyundai’s Mark Dipko joked at the cheesy show, saying, “Everybody can be Michael Knight, all right.”
BMW’s Elmar Frickenstein, meanwhile, told CES attendees that his dream is to have his car pick him up and drive him to the movies — and then park itself and retrieve him in front of the theater three hours later when the movie is over.