Sprint sees 54M customers, 40 percent spike in data revenue
by Brian White 
posted Aug 15th 2007 at 7:58AM
Sprint's recent second quarter financial results showed an interesting mix of numbers: income dropped by 90 percent, wireless data revenue jumped by 40 percent and the carrier broke the 54 million-customer mark. Dropping from a $291 million profit in the year-ago quarter to a $19 million profit is, well, pretty huge. But, at least Sprint saw its average revenue per sub sit above $60 for its latest quarter, with $9.75 attributable to data revenue. Everyone break out some EV-DO data sessions in salute of this if you please. On a lighter note, Sprint CEO Gary Foresee said the iPhone "blip" has not significantly affected number ports to AT&T, although the level is up "slightly" from before the iPhone launch.[via mocoNews]
Filed under: Sprint
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Randy @ Aug 15th 2007 8:30AM
Sure Gary, downplay the impact the iPhone has had on your customers. My wife was a Sprint customer for many years up until last march. The reason being that you guys can't seem to get your billing straightened where my wife was getting someone elses (exhorbant) bill, and someone else was getting hers. and having vision turned back on even when she explicitly asked that it be taken off numerous times.
And lets not to mention the crippling of Bluetooth on your phones.
90% loss of income is pretty big. How soon before they start layoffs?
Yankees368 @ Aug 15th 2007 1:22PM
"And lets not to mention the crippling of Bluetooth on your phones."
What crippling of Bluetooth on which phones. Sprint does not cripple their phones like that. They leave that task to Verizon.
NuShrike @ Aug 15th 2007 1:34PM
The Sanyo Katana's BT is crippled to the point of uselessness. No file transfers, no DUN, just headset profile. What a waste of a great phone.
Randy @ Aug 15th 2007 1:57PM
@ Yankees
LG removed the BT OBEX profile from the PM-325 at the request of Sprint. This was done to get people to pay for picture mail or to buy the (absurdly expensive) data cable & SW. They also disabled the speaker phone functions.
They don't do it to PDA/smart phones and neither does VZW (thankfully.) But they have hobbled other phones in various ways.
NuShrike @ Aug 15th 2007 2:37PM
The Sanyo Katana's BT is totally nerfed. Only BT it can do is headset. What a waste of a great phone.
Andy @ Aug 15th 2007 3:31PM
I have a Mogul and HTC screwed up the original BT implementation. It's all there, but it works like crap on a large number of devices. My HT820 headphones only hear about half a second of sound before going silent. Luckily my Jawbone works fine.
Andy @ Aug 15th 2007 11:43AM
I'm afraid I do nothing but help lower their numbers haha. I have the $30 SERO plan, so I get unlimited internet as a part of it. In fact, I'm listening to internet radio right now, eating up that data at 128Kbps.
Sprint really is horrible at customer service, but with access to a plan like that, I won't ever go to anyone else. Where else can you get unlimited 3g internet, unlimited text messages, unlimited mobile to mobile, unlimited 7pm nights and weekends, and 500 anytime minutes for $30 a month?!
Chris @ Aug 15th 2007 2:40PM
shhhh.... if too many people find out about it, they might not offer it anymore!
Andy @ Aug 15th 2007 3:29PM
Or they'll get more strict, like actually limiting referrals. That's ok, I really know employees. :P
ohng @ Aug 16th 2007 1:14AM
Andy: Interesting plan. For $30 (Cdn) I get unlimited talk time within my city (24/7). Yes, other stuff costs more, but absolutely nobody will ever touch the talk time, and so I also won't ever switch.
On a lighter note, this carrier realized, years ago, how much money they were losing with this plan, so they stopped offering it. I've been grandfathered in forever.
elgee02 @ Aug 16th 2007 6:04PM
Carrier results so far...
Sprint: 340k net subscriber ads (16k postpay), 2.0% (postpay only) churn, 53 mil total subs
AT&T: 1.46 mil net sub ads (912k postpay), 1.6% total churn, 63.7 mil total subs
VZW: 1.34 mil net sub ads (1.6 mil postpay), 1.3% total churn, 62.1 mil total subs
T-Mobile: 857k net sub ads (687k postpay), 2.7% total churn, 26.9 mil total subs
Sprint's past quarter was better than their previous but they still fall short in several key metrics against the competition. A large portion of Sprints net ads were thanks to Boost, which is not as profitable as contracted Sprint branded customers.
mfowler70 @ Aug 17th 2007 5:20PM
Viva la SERO!!