T-Mobile spurs U.S. wireless growth

Once again, T-Mobile USA led its European counterparts in growth, adding 857,000 new subscribers in the third quarter, driven by the continuing success of its MyFaves offering.

T-Mobile USA now boasts 27.7 million customers, making it still far and away the smallest of the U.S. national carriers but one of the fastest growing. T-Mobile has grown its customer base 15% in last 12 months, and a good deal of that growth can be directly attributed to MyFaves, which allows customers to designate five phone numbers that can be called for free from any T-Mobile account. At the end of September, T-Mobile had 3.6 million customers on the MyFaves plan, five times more than it had at the same time last year.

Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. branch’s revenue kept pace, increasing $12.1% to $4.89 billion. Its average revenue per user, however, appeared to stay flat due to DT’s tracking of T-Mobile Group’s revenue in euros, the value of which against the dollar has risen sharply. Third-quarter monthly APRU came in at 38 euros ($55.76), compared to 38 euros a year before and 40 euros in the second quarter. T-Mobile does not break out data ARPU as do the other U.S. operators. T-Mobile USA’s churn rate continues to balloon, though, increasing from 2.7% to 2.9% quarter over quarter but falling a tenth of a percentage point year-over-year. The churn numbers are the highest among the Tier 1 operators, though it factors in both contract and prepaid subscriber departures. T-Mobile, however is starting to depend more on more volatile pre-paid customers. Last quarter 35% of its net adds were on the prepaid side, resulting from the launch of its FlexPay offering over the summer.

Due to the maturity of European markets, the T-Mobile Group saw much slower growth in its European subsidiaries. The largest, with 34.5 million customers, T-Mobile Deutschland, added 142,000 subs in the third quarter, while T-Mobile U.K. added 219,000 customers, bringing its total subscribers to 17 million. While the U.S. passed the 80% penetration mark this year—the point at which most markets see a slowdown in growth—U.S. carriers haven’t slowed down. AT&T added 2 million new subscribers in the third quarter, largely driven by new iPhone contracts, and Verizon Wireless added another 1.6 million. The only exception appears to be Sprint, which is trying to reverse a financial and operational fallout after its acquisition of Nextel. It lost another 60,000 subscribers in the third quarter.

The Tier 2 operators have also been posting favorable numbers. In its last public earnings announcement before becoming private, Alltel reported adding 205,000 net subscribers to its 12 million-strong customer base in third quarter. U.S. Cellular’s third-quarter gains were more lackluster, with only 57,000 net additions for a total of 6.1 million subs, but those numbers were due mainly to declines in prepaid customers. U.S. Cellular managed to boost its contract customer ranks by 73,000, which, along with increased data revenue, boosted its ARPU 10% to $52.71 a month.