Prepaid Plans Are Rising Faster than Others for AT&T

AT&T’s prepaid customers have grown nearly 217 percent between 2009 and 2018. While prepaid customers are not a huge part of AT&T’s business, the telecommunications company has been able to put up impressive growth numbers. While its other payment methods have shrunk or stalled; postpaid grew 18 percent over that same time period, and resellers have shrunk by nearly 25 percent.

Part of the uptick in prepaid customers comes from the success of Cricket Wireless, AT&T’s flagship brand for prepaid services. Cricket was ranked number one in JD’s Customer Care category this year, a sign of the company’s strong service. That is further backed by the low customer churn rate AT&T’s yearly financials cited. Customer churn was less than three percent.

AT&T’s strong prepaid customer growth was high especially compared to its competitors. T-Mobile’s prepaid customers grew by 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2019, while Sprint’s prepaid base shrunk by 1.6 percent over the same time period. AT&T saw a nearly 10 percent increase in its prepaid customer growth in the first quarter of 2019, putting it on a promising path to continue this now decade long trend of prepaid customer expansion.