T-Mobile loses 77,000 customers in third quarter

BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP) — T-Mobile USA, a wireless carrier that is owned by Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, said Thursday that it lost 77,000 subscribers in the third quarter due in part to competition and increasingly innovative cell phone offerings from rivals.

The drop compares with a net gain of 670,000 customers in the year-ago quarter. T-Mobile lost 140,000 customers that had contracts, which are generally more profitable than prepaid customers, and gained 63,000 prepaid customers.

Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier, added 1.1 million net subscribers during the quarter, while AT&T added 2 million. Sprint Nextel Corp. lost 545,000 subscribers during the same period.

The company had 33.4 million customers at the end of the quarter, compared with 32.1 million last year. Of these, 26.9 million were contract customers and 6.5 were prepaid phone users.

T-Mobile's overall churn rate, or customer turnover rate, rose to 3.4 percent from 3 percent last year. The company said factors like increased competition and increasingly innovative cell phones led to an increase in churn from contract customers, while prepaid customer churn rose as more wholesale and no-contract FlexPay users departed.

Revenue totaled $5.38 billion, down 2 percent from $5.51 billion last year.