Sprint continues to bleed subscribers in Q3

Sprint Nextel posted third-quarter losses of $326 million as subscribers continued to flee the operator in droves. Revenue fell 12 percent to $8.82 billion, down from $10.04 billion a year ago. Subscriber totals dropped 1.3 million during Q3, reducing Sprint's customer base to 50.5 million--another 1.1 million post-paid customers exited Sprint's ranks, boosting the total decline over the past four quarters to nearly 4 million. By contrast, AT&T added 2 million subscribers in Q3 while Verizon Wireless signed up 1.5 million. Subscribers by network platform include 35.4 million on CDMA, 13.5 million on iDEN and 1.6 million Power Source users on both networks--in addition, more than 9 percent of postpaid customers upgraded their handsets during the third quarter, resulting in contract renewal growth.

According to Sprint, wireless service revenues for the quarter declined 13 percent year-over-year and 3 percent sequentially to $6.8 billion--the operator blamed the year-over-year drop on reduced subscriber numbers and diminished ARPU, while the sequential decline was attributed to subscriber exodus. Wireless postpaid ARPU in the quarter remained stable at $56 compared to the first two quarters of 2008, with data contributing about $13.50 and helping offset voice declines--still, wireless postpaid ARPU was down 6 percent year-over-year. CDMA data ARPU increased more than $1 from Q2 totals to about $16.50, and now represents almost 29 percent of total CDMA ARPU. Sprint cited strong take rates on bundled data services like its Simply Everything plan as well as continued growth in data cards as the catalysts behind the growth.

For more on Sprint's Q3 stumble:
- read this release

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