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USA's MetroPCS Looks Set to Overtake US Cellular
In Q4 08, the remaining seven US operators with between 0.25m and 10m customers collectively recorded their best quarter since Q1 07, adding 0.87m customers to finish the year with an aggregate total of 18.20m. However, this gain was entirely attributable to budget networks Leap Wireless and MetroPCS, with the other five recording a net loss to their aggregated customer base. MetroPCS, the second largest of the seven, added a record 0.52m customers to finish on 5.37m, while Leap scored its second best ever figure of 0.38m to finish on 3.84m.
US Cellular is the largest of the seven with just under 6.2m customers, although it could well be surpassed by MetroPCS during 2009. While MetroPCS added 1.40m customers during 2008, US Cellular managed a gain of just 94k. This was still the third best annual increase of the group, however. Ntelos was the only other operator to record positive growth with a 28k uplift; Cincinnati Bell and Centennial both lost 20k and Qwest was down 107k. At the end of the year, Centennial had 1.09m customers, Qwest 0.72m, Cincinnati Bell 0.55m and Ntelos 0.44m.
On a proportionate basis, MetroPCS and Leap were the only operators to record double digit growth. MetroPCS was up 35.4% in 2008, compared to 34.7% growth in 2007, while Leap improved from 28.4% to 34.3%. Ntelos was the next fastest growing with a 6.9% rate, while US Cellular managed just 1.5%. Qwest's negative 13.0% was the worst of the group, with Cincinnati Bell down 3.6% and Centennial 1.8%.
A glance at the ARPU figures reveals that the growth of Leap and MetroPCS came at some cost. Leap's ARPU was down 6.9% compared to Q4 07 at $42.44 and MetroPCS's was down 5.4% to $40.52, the lowest reported by any of the group. Cincinnati Bell managed a 5.1% gain to $42.20. The other three all had an advantage of more than $10, with US Cellular on $52.71, Ntelos on $54.32 and Centennial on an impressive $66. Ntelos' figure was down $1.62m, but the others were both up slightly, which goes some way towards explaining their sluggish customer growth rates.
Posted to the site on 5th March 2009
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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