T-Mobile USA is having a good month: First J.D. Powers and Associates ranked it highest for in-store satisfaction and now it's posted impressive first-quarter results. Here's how it breaks down:
Subscribers: The carrier added 980,000 net new subscribers, 74 percent of whom are postpaid. The figure is a slight decrease in customer addition when compared to this quarter a year ago, but more than the 901,000 increase from last quarter. At the end of the most recent quarter T-Mobile said 84 percent of its 26 million subscribers are postpaid.
Churn: Subscriber churn fell a whole .1 percent to 2.7 percent, while postpaid churn fell from 2.1 percent to 1.9 percent year-on-year.
ARPU: Average revenue per user increased by $1 from $51 to $52, year-over-year. Data revenues grew by a $1 as well, hitting $7.50 per customer, which is up from $6.50 in Q1 2006. Some say the growth is a bit misleading because the carrier included its WiFi data service in the figure. Data revenues made up a total of $570 million in the first quarter of 2007, representing 14.3 percent of blended ARPU.
Messaging: T-Mobile USA subscribers sent a total of nearly 16 billion SMS and MMS messages during the quarter, up from nearly 13 billion in the fourth quarter of 2006. Also up from the mere 7 billion in the first quarter last year. (No wonder they're giving away free messaging on Mother's Day, look at that uptick in usage.)
For more on T-Mobile's solid Q1:
- see this press release