T-Mobile USA tops 30M mark: Most metrics flat year-over-year, data revenues growing

T-Mobile USA Inc. pushed past the 30 million subscriber mark during the first three months of the year, adding 981,000 net customers and ending the first quarter with 30.8 million customers. The net customer growth was inline with the 980,000 customers the carrier added during the first quarter of 2007.
Overall, T-Mobile USA added 2.1 million customers during the quarter, including more than one million customers acquired through its $2.4 billion purchase of SunCom Wireless Holdings Inc.
T-Mobile USA, which recently launched its first 3G market in New York City, is said to be eyeing an acquisition of No. 3 carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. through its parent company Deutsche Telekom AG.
Along with flat net customer additions, T-Mobile USA reported that customer churn remained steady at 2.6%. The carrier recently launched a new prepaid offering designed to bolster its position in the rapidly growing market segment. T-Mobile USA noted that 25% of its customer growth during the first quarter came from the prepaid sector.
The company ended the quarter with 5.5 million myFaves customers; the offering allows subscribers to make unlimited calls to a select group of people. Additionally, at least 84% of T-Mobile USA’s customer base was under contract with the carrier, it reported.
Average revenue per user reached $55 in the quarter, slightly down from the $56 it enjoyed in the previous quarter and first quarter of 2007. The carrier blamed the decline on “lower variable revenues from contract customers.” Meanwhile, blended ARPU, which includes prepaid customers, slid to $51, down from $52 in the previous quarter and the first quarter of 2007.
Data growth
Data revenues represented 16.6% of blended ARPU, or $8.50 per customer, up from 15.8% in the previous quarter and 14.3% in the year-ago period. The carrier said it managed more than 33 billion SMS and MMS messages during the quarter, compared with 24 billion in the previous quarter and 16 billion in the first quarter of 2007.
The nation’s No. 4 carrier brought in $5.2 billion in revenues during the quarter compared with $4.5 billion during the first quarter of 2007. Net income also improved from $318 million in the year-ago quarter to $462 million this year.
The company said it added around 600 cell sites to its network during the quarter and added another 2,500 through the SunCom acquisition, bringing its total nubmer of cell sites to 41,000 at the quarter’s close. T-Mobile USA also said it added about 5,000 UMTS/HSDPA capable cell sites, and ended the quarter with more than 13,000 UMTS cell sites.
“In the quarter we crossed the 30 million customer mark more than tripling our customer base over the past six years under the T-Mobile brand. We also finalized our SunCom acquisition, filling in the last major part of our footprint in the Carolinas and Puerto Rico and we are delighted to have the great employees of SunCom join our team. Our recent service introductions also have cracked open access to new areas of growth with targeted offerings in traditional landline replacement and advanced payment wireless plans along with the continued popularity of our unlimited myFaves offering,” said Robert Dotson, the company’s president and CEO.