Sprint reported earnings this morning. Here are the highlights:

• Consolidated net operating revenues of $8.2 billion for the quarter were 12% lower than in the first quarter of 2008 and 3% lower than the fourth quarter of 2008. Both the year-over-year and sequential decline are primarily due to a lower contribution from Wireless and lower Wireline voice revenue.
• The company served 49.1 million customers at the end of the quarter, compared to 49.3 million at the end of 2008. This includes 35.4 million post-paid subscribers (25.3 million on CDMA, 8.9 million on iDEN, and 1.2 million Power Source users who utilize both networks), 4.3 million prepaid subscribers (3.5 million on iDEN and 800,000 on CDMA) and 9.4 million wholesale and affiliate subscribers, all of whom utilize our CDMA network.
• For the quarter, total wireless customers declined by approximately 182,000, including net losses of 1.25 million post-paid customers – comprising 531,000 CDMA and 719,000 iDEN customers (including a net 94,000 customers who transferred from the iDEN network to the CDMA network). The company also lost 90,000 prepaid CDMA customers. The company gained a net 764,000 prepaid iDEN customers and 394,000 wholesale and affiliate subscribers. The company achieved total subscriber growth on the iDEN network.
• The sequential decline in total subscribers improved by more than 1 million. Subscriber growth in wholesale was primarily driven by the increasing market opportunity for open network devices, such as the Amazon Kindle 2, that extend broadband wireless connectivity to a variety of electronic applications.
  

The new pre-paid subscriber adds are due primarily to the huge success of Boost Mobile's $50 all-you-can eat plan. That number (764K) exceeds what analysts had predicted. And while post-paid subscriber hemorrhaging may have slowed Sprint is still seeing huge numbers go out the door to AT&T and Verizon. The Pre can't get here soon enough for the embattled carrier. And the Pre is now rumored to be coming out the first week of June.

Regarding Clear/WiMax:

Sprint 4G WiMAX service is currently available in Baltimore and is expected to be available in Portland this summer. In the first quarter, the company announced it also plans to launch WiMAX service in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle in 2009, and expects 2010 launch cities to include New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Expect Sprint to be at the forefront of providing bandwidth for the new generation of devices that are coming. This is an opportunity and area of growth for the company.