Prepaid adds keep U.S. wireless industry afloat

Boost Mobile and MetroPCS saw enormous gains in the first quarter. They were far from the only ones. This makes sense, at least intuitively. The U.S. economy isn’t doing so hot and people are looking for ways to save on their monthly phone bills. This has led some to wonder whether prepaid growth is an illusion. That’s not a question with an answer right now. What’s for certain, though, is that prepaid fueled wireless industry growth in the first quarter. To what extent? According to a report from IDC, prepaid accounted for 75 percent of U.S. wireless adds. The top 10 U.S. carriers collectively added 3.5 million subscribers in the first quarter, meaning prepaid carriers added 2.625 million. That might seem like an astronomical number at first, but once we look at the numbers it starts to make sense. Boost Mobile: 764,000 MetroPCS: 684,000 Tracfone: 567,000 Cricket: 493,000 AT&T: 325,000 Verizon: 300,000 T-Mobile: 249,000 Right there, that’s 3.382 million subscribers. A couple of caveats: Tracfone’s numbers may very well be gross adds (this is the only source I could find), and Virgin Mobile lost 133,000 subscribers. Still, the number seems to be a bit higher than that 2.625 million. Surely, all of the above-mentioned carriers are in the U.S. top 10. No matter what the actual figure, it doesn’t figure to sustain for the second quarter. Both the second and third quarters are notoriously slow for the wireless industry, so expect a drop-off from these gaudy numbers. Also, MetroPCS figures to do a bit worse, as they won’t have the immediate impact of their Boston and New York networks. Ditto Boost and the $50 unlimited plan. Still, things are looking good for prepaid. We’re seeing new plans, and people are responding. We’ll see if prepaid can still outpace postpaid by a similar margin in the second quarter.]]>