Sprint expands its 4G LTE, Sprint Spark services

Sprint today made a couple of big announcements, revealing both its Q1 2014 earnings as well as confirming that its 4G LTE and Sprint Spark services are now live in more locales across the U.S.

Sprint says that its 4G LTE network has been activated in 41 new cities, including Long Island, New York; Minneapolis, Minnesota and Phoenix, Arizona. Additionally its tri-band Sprint Spark LTE service is now available in Newark, New Jersey; Oakland, California; Orlando, Florida; Tacoma, Washington; Waukegan, Illinois; and West Palm Beach, Florida. In total, Sprint's LTE network is now available in 443 cities, while its Spark service is active in 24 markets.

Sprint today also announced its Q1 2014 results. The big yellow carrier reports that it lost 231,000 Sprint platform postpaid customers, most of which it says were due to service disruptions that came from its network overhaul. Sprint also says that its Sprint platform prepaid loss for the quarter finished at 364,000, while it gained 212,000 wholesale and affiliate customers. Sprint ended Q1 2014 with nearly 54 million subscribers.

Sprint also touched a bit on its Framily group plans in its report. The operator says that Framily has grown faster than any new rate plan before it, claiming nearly 3 million customers. Sprint notes that Framily was only available in its brick and mortar stores during the quarter and that it expects Framily to grow even further once is distribution expands.

Finally, Sprint's financials for the quarter included a net loss of $151 million. Sprint notes that this is a 77 percent improvement from Q1 2013.

Overall it sounds like Sprint had itself a mixed quarter. Its LTE and Sprint Spark networks saw some nice growth today, and the Framily plan appears to be gaining nice traction with consumers. However, Sprint also lost quite a few subscribers, and despite the fact that its net loss is an improvement from one year ago, it still took a loss for the quarter.

Sources: Sprint (1), (2)

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