Sprint takes subscriber hit; still improves

From CNET News.com: Sprint Nextel continued to lose wireless subscribers in the first quarter of 2011 as it faced stiff competition from Verizon Wireless, which began selling the Apple iPhone in February. But the company improved its churn rate and narrowed its losses.
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Sprint lost 114,000 postpaid, or contract, subscribers during the quarter. It was expected to lose about 40,000 such customers, according to Reuters.

Still, the company managed to improve its churn rate, or the rate at which customers leave its service compared to the same quarter a year ago. Sprint recorded its best-ever postpaid churn rate of 1.81 percent, compared to 2.15 percent during the same quarter a year ago. The churn rate was also better than in the fourth quarter of 2010 when it was 1.86 percent.

Analysts predicted that Sprint would continue to lose customers during the quarter as Verizon introduced the new iPhone on its network in February.

The company had a total of more than 51 million wireless customers at the end of the first quarter of 2011. This includes 33.0 million postpaid subscribers, 13.1 million prepaid subscribers, and approximately 4.9 million wholesale and affiliate subscribers.

Sprint added more than 1.1 million net wireless customers during the quarter, but it lost about 114,000 net postpaid subscribers. Still this was an improvement of about 464,000, or 80 percent, compared to the first quarter of 2010.

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