ARPU for prepaid and postpaid wireless subscribers of Sprint Corporation 2012-2019

In the first quarter of 2019, the average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) of Sprint Corporation’s postpaid wireless subscribers was at 43.25 U.S. dollars, while the ARPU of retail prepaid wireless subscribers was 33.67 U.S. dollars. In recent years, there’s been a narrowing of the gap between the ARPU of postpaid and prepaid subscribers.

How does Sprint compare to competitors?

Overall the monthly price for a mobile contract in the United States has declined over the past 15 years from more than 50 U.S. dollars to less than 40 U.S. dollars. All of the major mobile carriers in the United States – AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile – have managed to keep their average ARPU for mobile postpaid contracts at 40 U.S. dollars or more though over the last few years. Of those four major service providers AT&T and Verizon are the biggest ones both in terms of revenue and number of subscribers.

Sprint is currently in fourth place having fallen behind T-Mobile, which has been on a growth path in the United States. The planned merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, approved by regulatory agencies in 2019, is set to reshape the market though and will create a third major competitor for AT&T and Verizon in the wireless market.

What is ARPU?

The ARPU is a measure of the total revenue divided by the number of subscribers, in order to quantify the revenue generated by one customer using the telecom item per unit of time. It is a key figure for comparing companies competing in the same market or segment. For Sprint and other telecommunications companies, ARPU includes revenue generated from incoming calls in addition to revenues billed to the customer each month for usage.