In the third quarter, the company added a record 1.397 million postpaid customers under the T-Mobile brand. Including the MetroPCS brand and wholesale, net customer gains reached 2.345 million, for a total base of 52.9 million at the end of September.
With 10 million customers now added in the six quarters of the 'Un-carrier' strategy, T-Mobile grew quarterly service revenues 10.6 percent year-on-year to USD 5.684 billion. Equipment sales were up 6.4 percent to USD 1.561 billion, as T-Mobile sold 7.7 million devices in the quarter. ARPU was still under pressure from the switch to Simple Choice plans and extensive promotions in the period. Branded postpaid ARPU fell 5.3 percent year-on-year to USD 49.84, while prepaid ARPU rose 5.3 percent to USD 37.59, driven by MetroPCS.
The higher costs for adding more customers led to flat adjusted EBITDA of USD 1.346 billion for Q3. The net loss widened to USD 0.12 per share from USD 0.05 a year ago due to the costs of shutting down the MetroPCS network. The shutdown and switch to LTE was accelerated, and the operator expects USD 250-300 million in additional costs for the transition this year.
T-Mobile increased capex in Q3 to USD 1.13 billion, as it started the deployment of 700 MHz and 1900 MHz spectrum on its network. It also announced more acquisitions of 700 MHz A block spectrum to increase its coverage. The LTE network is expected to cover 300 million people by the end of next year, compared to 260 million at the end of 2014.
