BELLEVUE, Washington, United States-T-Mobile USA reported a company-record 869,000 net customer additions for the third quarter comprised of more than 1 million net contract customer additions and a loss of 190,000 prepaid subscribers. The quarterly net additions, which led the industry, were well ahead of the 372,700 the carrier added for the third quarter last year.
T-Mobile USA said it ended the quarter with 8.9 million customers, which includes 84 percent contract subscribers. Soothing fears that its dramatic subscriber additions were due to credit-challenged customers on its Smart Access rate plans, T-Mobile noted those customers represented less than 5 percent of its customer base and are all required to submit deposits.
Customer churn dropped from 5.1 percent last year to 4.2 percent this year, but was up from the 4.1 percent T-Mobile USA recorded during the second quarter. Average revenue per user (ARPU) increased slightly from US$49 last year to US$50 this year, while cash cost per user fell from US$32 during the third quarter last year to US$23 this year.
T-Mobile USA also reported US$1.5 billion in total revenues for the quarter, an increase over the US$1.3 billion it reported for the previous quarter and US$930 million posted for the third quarter of 2001.
