The Verizon-Alltel merger, which was recently approved by the FCC, will leave an even greater gap between the large and small US mobile operators; there will be no networks of between 7m and 30m customers. There are currently seven networks with fewer than 7m but more than 0.25m customers, although if AT&T’s plan to buy Centennial is successful, there will only be six remaining. At the end of Q3 08, these seven had 17.33m customers in total. Aggregated annual growth stood at 13.1%, compared to 15.9% for T-Mobile ,14.0% for AT&T, 11.2% for Verizon and -6.3% for Sprint.

Four out of the seven networks suffered net declines in the quarter. The largest, US Cellular, lost 18k customers to finish the quarter on 6.18m – its first such loss in five years. Centennial saw its fourth successive quarterly loss, shedding 1k to end on 1.09m. Qwest’s 45k decline was its third in a row but it was by far the largest of the three – and, indeed, its largest for four years. It took Qwest’s total customer base down to 0.77m, its lowest level since Q3 05. Finally, Cincinnati Bell suffered an 8k loss, its largest for three years, with an end-quarter customer base of 0.57m.

Only two of these four – Qwest and Centennial – also saw annual declines, with drops of 6.5% and 2.0% respectively. Similarly, only two companies saw double-digit annual growth. Leap and MetroPCS remain the fastest- growing operators in the US market with growth rates of 27.6% and 32.3% respectively. These figures were down on the previous year, but with 3.46m and 4.85m customers respectively, both operators already deserve to be considered as significant players. Ntelos was the next fastest growing, a 7.7% annual uplift taking its customer base to 0.43m. However, it too saw a decline in growth (3.2pp), as did Cincinnati Bell (down 8.4pp to 1.7%) and US Cellular (down 3.8pp to 1.9%). In fact none of the seven managed an increase in their customer base growth rate, although Centennial narrowed its decline from 23.0%.

Source:Cellular-news