Sprint losses widen in Q2, but subscriber losses slow

Sprint Nextel swung to second quarter losses of $384 million, a $40 million year-over-year [1]drop, although the operator's subscriber exodus slowed compared to Q1 defections. A day after announcing its acquisition [2] of MVNO Virgin Mobile USA, Sprint reported postpaid wireless subscriber losses totaling 991,000, and now serves 48.8 million customers in all, down from 49.1 million in the first quarter. Postpaid churn in the quarter was 2.05 percent, an improvement over Q1's 2.25 percent churn but off from year-ago totals of 1.98 percent. About 9 percent of postpaid customers upgraded their handsets during the second quarter, a slight sequential increase translating to increased contract renewals--it's worth noting that Sprint introduced the Palm Pre smartphone [3] in early June.

Wireless service revenues for the quarter were flat sequentially at $6.4 billion--according to Sprint, growth from Boost Monthly Unlimited subscribers offset revenue declines from postpaid subscribers. Wireless service revenues declined 9 percent year-over-year due to reduced subscriber numbers. Wireless post-paid ARPU remained stable at around $56, thanks to continued growth in fixed-rate bundled plans such as Simply Everything--data revenues contributed more than $15.50 to overall postpaid ARPU in the second quarter, driven by growth in CDMA data ARPU, which increased more than 3 percent quarter-over-quarter to more than $18.50, representing about 32 percent of total CDMA ARPU.

For more on Sprint's Q2 results:
- read this release [4]