Sprint ARPU jumps--is WiMAX the reason?

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Sprint still isn't reporting WiMAX subscribers, but it did report one metric during its Q1 earnings call to indicate it’s seeing success with its mobile broadband and 4G smartphone services: postpaid average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) is increasing, which could only be driven by data services.

Sprint suffered a net loss of 114,000 postpaid subscribers, but most of those departures came from its dwindling Nextel iDEN and PowerSource CDMA-iDEN customer pools. Sprint added a net total of 310,000 CDMA customers, which is where any gains to its WiMAX subscriber base would appear. Those additions could easily have been 3G customers, but Sprint’s postpaid ARPU jumped a whole dollar to $56 per month over both the last year and the last quarter. Though Sprint said that some of that growth came from its new bundled-everything plans, most of those gains came primarily from data. It’s hard to say whether those increases come from more customers signing up for standard data plans on the 3G network or those upgrading to pricier 4G data plans over Sprint’s growing complement of WiMAX smartphones. It would help if Sprint would deign to release useful data metrics such as total WiMAX devices or data ARPU, but Sprint has steadfastly refused to release any 4G device data since it started offering Clearwire’s WiMAX service, and it stopped reporting data ARPUs last year. The likely reason is Sprint’s two biggest competitors, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, are wiping the floor with Sprint when it comes to smartphone and mobile broadband activations despite Sprint’s head start with WiMAX -- something Sprint isn't exactly refuting.


Sprint ARPU jumps--is WiMAX the reason? Sprint: What iPhone? We’re Picking Up More Subscribers Than Ever Before (mocoNews.net)