Sprint income plummets in third quarter

Sprint Nextel said today that net income dropped 77 percent in the third quarter, a decline precipitated by the carrier's struggles to sign new subscribers. Sprint reported third-quarter net income of $64 million, or 2 cents a share, down from $279 million, or 9 cents, in the same period a year ago. The operator suffered net losses of 60,000 wireless subscribers, led by defections from the Nextel and Boost Mobile brands. Sprint Nextel now serves 34.1 million customers on CDMA and 18.7 million on iDEN, with 1.2 million PowerSource users accessing both platforms.

According to Sprint, post-paid churn for the quarter was 2.3 percent compared to 2.0 percent in the second quarter and 2.4 percent a year ago. Post-paid ARPU came in at about $59, a 3 percent year-over-year decline and a 2 percent sequential decline--modest CDMA ARPU growth was offset by iDEN declines. Data contributed more than $10 to overall post-paid ARPU in Q3 and more than $13 to CDMA post-paid ARPU.

For more on Sprint's disastrous third quarter:
- read this release

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