T-Mobile USA Sees Growth, T-Mobile UK Goes Down

Germany-based Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile USA and T-Mobile UK, announced today the financial results for the first quarter of the ongoing year. According to the company, the fourth largest carrier in the United States has reached a total number of 33.173 million subscribers, which translates into a 7.7 percent increase compared with the same period a year ago.

However, it seems that the growth rate went down 57.7 percent compared with the first quarter of 2008, and only a number of 415k subscribers have been added to the wireless carrier. Even so, the company saw its service revenue going up 4.1 percent year over year, totaling US$4.77 billion. T-Mobile USA is reported to have seen data revenues increased by as much as 31 percent in the first three months of the year, compared with the same time period the previous year, which helped the mobile phone carrier post a net income of $322 million for the quarter, still lower compared with the $483 million posted in the fourth quarter of the last year, or the $462 million reported a year ago.

In comparison with T-Mobile USA's performance, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile UK unit posted rather low figures for the time frame. The number of subscribers the carrier accounts for at the moment went down to 16.675 million, which represents a 2.6 percent drop compared with the first quarter of 2008. The positive aspect of the news is that the wireless operator lost only 111k subscribers in Q1 2009, compared to the 187k it lost a year ago. We should also note that T-Mobile lost subscribers only in two of its market, namely UK and Slovakia, the latter reporting a 0.2 percent reduction in the number of users.

In additional news, we also learn that T-Mobile UK will get a new leader starting June 2009, in the person of Richard Moat, former Chief Executive Officer of Orange Romania, who will succeed Jim Hyde as Managing Director of T-Mobile UK. “I look forward to joining T-Mobile UK,” said Richard Moat. “T-Mobile is a major player in the UK mobile market and has a strong reputation for high value products and services. It is also a leader in mobile broadband and is steadily building real differentiation in the coverage and performance of its 3G network.”