Richard Moat, the recently-appointed CEO of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK, says the beleaguered network is showing signs of recovery after enjoying its best-ever month for subscriber growth in September. According to a report in The Times, Moat said the operator signed-up an estimated 100,000 net new subscribers in September, though he declined to give exact figures. It had lost 200,000 subscribers to rivals in the first six months of the year. Moat said the subscriber gain, boosted by its heavily advertised ‘Free Texts for Life’ promotion, was 13 percent higher than its previous best month, December 2007. Growth in T-Mobile UK’s lower-value pre-paid business accounted for most of the increase in the month, but Moat said that there was also a “healthy increase” in the number of contract customers in the period. He said he was also looking to improve the operator’s profit margin to around 20 percent, up from 17.3 percent in the second quarter.

 
Moat – a former Orange executive – was appointed CEO of T-Mobile UK in June and was charged with turning around the unit after it was deemed partly responsible for Deutsche Telekom issuing a surprise profits warning in April. However, it was subsequently announced that Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom’s Orange had agreed to merge their UK operations in a 50/50 joint venture that will create a new UK market leader. The Times notes that the improvements at T-Mobile UK could strengthen its standing in the proposed joint-venture amid rumours that Orange may eventually take control of the network and phase out the T-Mobile brand.