Mobile Leapfrogs Sprint To Become Third Largest US Wireless Carrier

Sprint also neared its goal of turning positive in terms of core smartphone subscribers, losing just 12,000 such customers in the quarter, as compared to the several hundred thousand or millions that it had been ceding in prior quarters.

Sprint improved postpaid performance was attributed to a significant drop in customer churn from 2.05% last year to 1.56% this year, and a 13% increase in gross customer additions. In contrast, T-Mobile added an impressive 2.1 million net customers.

Sprint has begun to stem its customer losses recently, but concerns over its cash have circulated as the company needs money to further overhaul its lagging network and to bid in a key auction of wireless licenses expected for early 2016.

The improving but still negative postpaid phone trend puts Sprint shoulder to shoulder with AT&T atthe moment, as the two telecoms watch Verizon and T-Mobile US running away with prospective customers in this highly profitable market segment. The stock had declined 20 percent this year, while T-Mobile jumped 54 percent.

Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. Sprint said it was working with parent company Softbank to set up a new company to take over financing of leased devices.

Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint said Tuesday that it ended its fiscal first quarter with 57.7 million total users – falling just short of T-Mobile’s 58.9 million.

The carrier said it added 675,000 net connections to its network for the quarter ended June 30, which was a substantial turnaround from the 220,000 connections lost for the same period in 2014, though about half of what it did the previous quarter. Net operating revenue fell to $8.03 billion from $8.79 billion.

There is no doubt that T-Mobile wants to be right up there with the big boys, the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world, but for that to happen it had to overtake Sprint first which held third place.

“We are confident in our plan to leverage our unique spectrum assets to make our network a competitive advantage, aggressively reduce operating costs and utilize our business relationships and assets to fund our turnaround”. Sprint’s capital expenditure outlook remains at $5 billion.

On Monday, Sprint said Chief Financial Officer Joseph Eutenauer would step down after holding the post for more than four years through a period of financial distress.