T-Mobile Adds 1.4M Subscribers in U.S.

Unstrung reports that "T-Mobile USA added about 1.4 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2005, up from 1.06 million in the previous quarter and 1.02 million added in the same period in 2004. For the year, T-Mobile added 4.4 million total customers in 2005, compared to 4.2 million the year before.

Carmi Levy at Info-Tech Research Group said, "In a market this competitive and turbulent, year-over-year growth is a positive indicator."

However the growth in the U.S. masked longer term challenges for T-Mobile. The network operator is the last of the four major carriers in the U.S. to build out a 3G network, and is the only one yet to inroduce service.

Craig Mathias at Farpoint Group said, "It's do-or-die time for T-Mobile USA to get into 3G." Also 3G is critical for gaining enterprise business.

Levy said, "Any carrier that isn’t actively targeting the enterprise market won’t be in any market for long. The corporate space provides a greater opportunity for carriers to deliver the kind of value-added services and margins that the increasingly cut-throat consumer business is only now beginning to achieve."

According to the article data is critical to T-Mobile's future prospects. "Data revenues now represent almost 10 percent of the company's average revenue per user, up from under 7 percent a year ago."