T-Mobile slide continues as it loses subscribers

[ComicalMoodyDan]

T-Mobile slide continues as it loses subscribers
FRIDAY AUGUST 10, 2012, 11:01 AM
THE RECORD

The long slide of T-Mobile USA continued in the latest quarter, as the country's No. 4 cellphone company lost subscribers and struggled to sign people up for smart phones.

The company, a subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, said on Thursday it lost a net 205,000 subscribers in the second quarter, a record for the period.

Among phone subscribers under contract, it lost 557,000, also the highest number of the second quarter. Phone subscribers on contract-based plans pay the most, and are the bread and butter of large wireless carriers.

T-Mobile's revenue from monthly fees on contract service fell 9 percent from a year ago. The larger wireless carriers — Verizon, AT&T and Sprint — all managed to increase this number in the second quarter.

While other big carriers rely on boosting smart-phone use to raise monthly fees, the number of smart-phone users at T-Mobile USA was flat from the first quarter, at 11.6 million.

Because of job cuts, T-Mobile continued to be profitable, with a second-quarter net income of $207 million, nearly flat compared with $212 million a year ago. Overall revenue fell 3 percent from a year ago to $4.9 billion. The strong dollar helped T-Mobile's results boost those of its German parent, which reports results in euros.

Last year, T-Mobile agreed to be bought by AT&T Inc., but the deal was blocked by U.S. regulators.

— The Associated Press

T-Mobile slide continues as it loses subscribers - NorthJersey.com

[spidershowl11]

The mighty has fallen as the bad news day for T-Mobile continues after their quarterly earnings show yet another quarter of customer losses. A new JD Power study once again places T-Mobile in dead last.
The JD Power survey was conducted with responses from 8,047 wireless customers who are current subscribers who report having a sales transaction with their current carrier within the past six months. The study was conducted between January and June 2012. This study measures different purchase experience factors, but almost half the weighting rested on behaviors we can control in our stores – promptness, knowledge, courtesy, timeliness, and concern for the customer’s needs.
Seriously, where is this world coming to, that Sprint is now first in Purchase Experience and T-Mobile is last? This is indeed a joke, right?

[dmapr]

I'm going to go on a limb here and suggest that statistically speaking any study of 8,000 subscribers out of 300,000,000 is not enough to draw any sound conclusions. Loss of customers on the other hand is a serious problem for them indeed.

[bobolito]

Crazy crazy crazy..... Tmobile used to always be on top on the JD Powers surveys. I guess they stopped paying them. LoL


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[mpersic]

Based on my recent experience with T-Mobile, the slide will continue. This is not the same quality service (both in customer support and signal strength) that loyal TMO customers are accustomed to. I've been with TMO for 10 years and am going to jump ship. Their support is horrid and their signal strength in my area (89523) is non-existent and their handsets are even worse (yes, the handset is the responsibility of the handset mfg., however, TMO must take some responsibility for pushing the handset to market before it has been fully tested on the network). I'm sad to say, good-bye TMO.

[Jaguar Mobile]

If people are leaving due to lack of customer support, and you cut customer support employees to try to keep profitable, that doesn't sound like a winning formula. Gotta love investors pressuring to make sure they get bigger and bigger dividend checks each quarter, no matter what. I swear sometimes investors actually drive these giant businesses under...

But also from what I understand T Mobile has just sold off a lot (all?) of it's 3G towers so they could build up their 4G network... Is this just a rough point for them, or is there more to the story?