T-Mobile's Growth Continues With Adds in Wireless, Home Internet Users
The nation's second-largest carrier added 1.3 million postpaid subscribers in the first quarter.
T-Mobile's first quarter of 2022 proved to be a good one, as the wireless carrier revealed it had increases in postpaid, prepaid and home internet subscribers.
In earnings announced Wednesday morning, T-Mobile revealed that it had added over 1.3 million postpaid customers in the period, of which 589,000 were postpaid phone users. Postpaid users, who pay their bills at the end of the month, are a subscriber category eyed by industry watchers as a barometer for long-term revenue and overall success.
Last week AT&T said that it added 691,000 net new postpaid phone users in the quarter. Verizon reported a loss of 292,000 postpaid phone users for its consumer division during the period, though it did have 256,000 net phone adds for its business unit.
Beyond the postpaid growth, T-Mobile said it had added 62,000 prepaid users and 338,000 subscribers to its home internet service during the quarter. Last week the carrier announced that it has now reached 1 million users for its $50 per month home internet service and that it has expanded availability to another 10 million people.
All told, T-Mobile says it now has 109.5 million customers. The carrier's low-band 5G network now reaches 315 million people, while its faster midband 5G network (what the carrier calls "Ultra Capacity") is now available to 225 million people.
The carrier says it remains on track to hit its goal of reaching 260 million people with midband 5G this year, expanding to 300 million by the end of 2023. T-Mobile says that roughly 45% of its postpaid customers have a 5G phone and that 5G devices make up "more than half of total network traffic."
In addition to the network upgrades, the carrier says it is "on track" to complete the migration of Sprint customers to T-Mobile's network by "mid-year" and that it will upgrade or decommission "substantially all" of the remaining Sprint network cell sites by the end of the year. It says that it has already decommissioned "roughly one-third of the 35,000 targeted sites," with the goal of "ramping" up that work in the second half of 2022.
In financials, the company posted revenues of $20.12 billion with a diluted earnings-per-share of 57 cents. Analysts polled by Yahoo Finance expected revenues of $20.11 billion and an EPS of 32 cents.