T-Mobile: Churn spikes in third quarter

T-Mobile said Thursday that it added 670,000 new customers in the third quarter to end with 32.1 million customers. The rub: The carrier's blended churn is the increasing.

The company said its net income was $442 million, down from $452 million a year ago, on revenue of $5.51 billion, up from $4.89 billion a year ago. T-Mobile touted the "successful launch" of the G1 with Google but didn't serve up much more detail.

Contract customer churn was 2.4 percent in the third quarter, up from 1.9 percent in the second quarter and 2 percent a year ago. Blended churn--contract and prepaid customers--was 3 percent. T-Mobile's churn rate is well ahead rivals such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

In a statement, T-Mobile said:

The sequential increase in contract churn was primarily due to the continued impact of customers coming to the anniversary of their two-year contract that was first introduced in April 2006. The second quarter of 2008 was the first quarter these two-year contracts could have expired. Competitive pressure also contributed to the sequential increase in contract churn.

The details: