T-Mobile Added 800,000 Prized Customers in 4th Quarter

T-Mobile said it added 800,000 of the industry's most lucrative phone customers in the last three months of 2013, capping a remarkable turnaround year for a carrier that for years bled millions of customers to rivals.

Overall, T-Mobile added 869,000 so-called postpaid subscribers in the fourth quarter, up 34% from the third quarter and a significant departure from 515,000 customer losses during the same period last year. Of those additions, 69,000 involved tablets or other devices aside from phones. Total customer additions were 1.6 million for the quarter, bringing total additions in 2013 to 4.4 million. T-Mobile's postpaid "churn," or the percentage of customers leaving the carrier, dropped to 1.7% in the fourth quarter from 2.5% a year earlier. T-Mobile has mounted a flamboyant bid to win customers by doing away with much criticized standbys like service contracts and international data fees, while offering high-end phones like the iPhone and upgrading to faster next-generation network service. In a profanity-laced presentation at an industry conference in Las Vegas, T-Mobile Chief Executive John Legere said the bulk of his company's new customers were coming from AT&T and Sprint, and a smaller but growing number were beginning to join from Verizon. "We are either going to take over this whole industry, or these bastards are going to change," Mr. Legere said.