AT&T has named John Dwyer as the new president of its prepaid unit Cricket Wireless, replacing Jennifer Van Buskirk. AT&T CFO John Stephens has described the prepaid service as “perhaps the biggest story” of Q3 2015.
AT&T (NYSE:T) has named John Dwyer as the new president of its prepaid unit Cricket Wireless, replacing Jennifer Van Buskirk.
Dwyer was previously senior vice president for customer experience for AT&T Mobile and Business Solutions, focussing on retail sales operations, ensuring marketing effectiveness and improving customer service.
In his long career with the company, he has also held senior VP roles in merger integration, retail operations and sales effectiveness and VP roles in customer service and sales operations.
In his new role with Cricket, which says its 4G network covers some 310 million people, Dwyer will oversee day-to-day operations and long-term strategy to drive growth and profitability.
AT&T Mobility CEO Glenn Lurie commented that Dwyer will “lead a nationwide team delivering simplicity, reliability and value to millions more customers seeking premium prepaid without compromise”.
Van Buskirk has taken on the role of president of AT&T’s Northeast region. The telco credited her with transforming Cricket into “a national powerhouse”, adding that her expertise in managing change and teams and building markets will stand her in good stead in her new role.
During a late October conference call on the company’s Q3 2015 results, AT&T CFO John Stephens described the strength of the premium prepaid service as “perhaps the biggest story in the quarter”.
“We added 466,000 prepaid voice subscribers in the quarter after losing subscribers in the year-ago third quarter,” he said, adding that the gains came from both Cricket and GoPhone products.
He added that Cricket is also delivering “great ARPUs” and helping to reduce overall churn.
“Cricket gives us a quality, prepaid offering for the more value-conscious customer, same great network, quality customer service, and the flexibility prepaid delivers with subscriber acquisition costs that are much lower than our postpaid voice,” he said.
