Sprint sees rare gain in core customers in late 2009
updated 08:45 am EST, Wed February 10, 2010
Sprint Q4 stems losses in cash, users
Sprint this morning posted a rare surprise gain in its core subscriber base after years of losses. Although its net subscriber base was down 69,000 in fall 2009 due to a large number of customers leaving the push-to-talk iDEN network, it actually gained 3,000 total subscribers to its CDMA phone service. The boost was the first in a year and a half and was helped both by some iDEN users switching to CDMA as well as added business, including the completed takeover of Virgin Mobile.
It now has a total 48.1 million subscribers, or slightly more than half of the customer bases of AT&T and Verizon.
Compared to fall 2008, the most recent quarter was a major turnaround; the year before it had lost about 600,000 more customers. Turnover was also slightly lower at about 2.11 percent, Sprint said. Fiscally, the carrier has similarly mitigated some of its losses as it shed a comparatively modest $980 million versus $1.62 billion a year earlier.
The company notably had a $1 drop in the average revenue per person as customers trimmed their use and their roaming, but it partly made up for the deficit through support; as fewer customers had to get credits for service problems, more of that revenue was kept than in the past. Smartphones like the HTC Hero, Palm Pixi and BlackBerry Curve 8530 also helped push the carrier's data revenue per person to a US-wide best of $19.50 as more customers ended up using smartphone-level plans.
The carrier is optimistic that it will continue to trim losses but faces a particularly uphill struggle as it has lost its Palm exclusive following the launches of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus at Verizon as well as expected launches both for Palm and for Android devices at AT&T.
