Sprint's year-end promotions appear to have paid off: The mobile provider netted nearly 1 million new customers in the third quarter.
Preliminary results show positive movement for the No. 3 U.S. carrier, which counted 30,000 net postpaid additions, 410,000 net prepaid subscribers, and 527,000 net wholesale users in the quarter that ended Dec. 31.
Sprint reported its highest number of postpaid gross additions in three years, as well as a 20 percent increase in new postpaid phone gross users.
Sprint will continue a "return to customer growth" in 2015, according to CEO Marcelo Claure. "[O]ur results during the last quarter show we are on the right track."
But Sprint continues to face competition from T-Mobile, which beat its target for postpaid net customer additions, attracting 8.3 million net customers in 2014, 2.1 million of which joined in the fourth quarter. But the un-carrier appears to have not reached its goal of surpassing Sprint to become the No. 3 carrier in 2014, though T-Mobile John Legere wants to make that happen in 2015.
The results come after a rather tumultuous year for Sprint. In early August, the carrier pulled the plug on merger talks with T-Mobile, and dropped its long-time CEO Dan Hesse in the process. Claure, founder of Brightstar Corp., took his place as company chief on Aug. 11.
Since then, the carrier has implemented an iPhone for Life annual upgrade plan, allowing subscribers to sign up for a 12-month lease option, with the choice to upgrade their iPhone every year.
Sprint also announced a "Cut Your Bill in Half Event" in December, providing unlimited talk and text and a data plan that is half the cost of an existing AT&T or Verizon plan.
It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for the carrier, however. Last month, Sprint was sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for illegally billing wireless customers tens of millions of dollars in unauthorized third-party charges.
"While we still have work to do, it is clear that our aggressive actions to provide customers with the best value in wireless are gaining momentum," Claure said.
Full financial results for the third fiscal quarter of 2014 will be published in February.
For more, see Congratulations! You Killed the Sprint/T-Mobile Merger, as well as After T-Mobile, Where Now for Sprint?