MetroPCS improves on Q3, but still well below last year

66,000 net adds in the third quarter, there was no way MetroPCS would slide even further. The fourth quarter includes the holiday rush, and telecommunications companies benefit from this. Metro was no exception, adding 317,000 net subscribers. While that’s a significant gain from the third quarter, it still falls below the half million subscribers the company added in the fourth quarter 2008. In the third quarter, the company’s churn rate became cause for concern. Prepaid companies typically see high churn rates, but Metro’s, 5.8 percent, was abnormally high. They did improve on that in the fourth quarter, by a half a percent to 5.3. That’s still high, though — almost certainly higher than rival Cricket. While I haven’t seen an exact figure on Cricket’s Q4 churn rate, CEO Doug Hutcheson said that it was below the Q3 rate, which was 5.4 percent. Year over year, MetroPCS went from 5.4 million subscribers at the end of 2008 to 6.6 million at the end of 2009. They benefitted greatly from Q1 adds, mostly due to new markets in New York and Boston. Metro also announced the changes we heard about last week. To recap, this means flat-rate billing, meaning the plan price is what you pay each month. There is no longer a free month upon new activation, but that added cost goes towards handset subsidies. The company also says it will add higher quality handsets during 2010. ]]>