T-Mobile subscriber base tops 30M
The wireless carrier is growing at a faster pace than Sprint Nextel but slower than AT&T and Verizon.
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| T-Mobile USA earned $51 per subscriber per month in the first quarter. |
NEW YORK (AP) -- T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the country, said Thursday it added 981,000 customers in the first quarter, which along with an acquisition brought its total to 30.8 million.
T-Mobile USA completed its acquisition of SunCom Wireless in February, which added 1.1 million subscribers in the southeastern United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
T-Mobile's growth means it is doing better than the next-largest carrier, Sprint Nextel Corp. (S, Fortune 500), which has been losing subscribers and had 53.8 million customers at the end of last year. Sprint has yet to report for the first quarter.
The largest carriers are adding subscribers slightly faster than T-Mobile. Verizon Wireless gained 1.5 million subscribers in the first quarter, while AT&T Inc. added 1.3 million and remained the biggest carrier.
Compared to Verizon Wireless and AT&T (T, Fortune 500), T-Mobile keeps adding more prepaid customers, which are less profitable. A quarter of its customers were prepaid in the first quarter.
T-Mobile USA is a subsidiary of Europe's biggest telecom, Deutsche Telekom AG (DT), which reported its quarterly earnings Thursday. The U.S. division had $5.19 billion in revenue, accounting for a sizeable chunk of Deutsche Telekom's overall 15 billion euros ($23.14 billion) in sales.
Average monthly revenue per user was $51 in the United States, down from $52 in the previous quarter, mainly because contract customers were racking up fewer extra charges.
T-Mobile has been trailing the other carriers in rolling out cellular broadband - or "3G" - abilities. But this week it said it has turned on a 3G network in New York City, and 20 to 25 other major markets will follow by the end of the year. As yet, few phones can take advantage of this network. 
