Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) And we’ll go first to Ric Prentiss with Raymond James.
Ric Prentiss – Raymond James & Associates
Good morning guys.
James Quarforth
Hey, Ric.
Michael Moneymaker
Good morning, Ric.
Ric Prentiss – Raymond James & Associates
Couple of questions for you. First on the third quarter on the wireless side on net adds, post-paid adds came in pretty good, but total were a little light. Can you talk about what happened on the pre-paid side and also I think last quarter on the call you said July gross adds were going very well, was there kind of a softening in the rest of the quarter?
James Quarforth
Yes, good question, Ric. I think if you look at the gross adds, particularly postpay where we focus our attention, they were up about 10% quarter-over-quarter. So we were very pleased with that. The major driver for the reduction in net adds, I guess, the first and foremost, was we had a fairly significant contract last year with Marshall University, where we were part of their communications plan or offering to their students as part of their required technology package. And they elected this year not to include wireless in that package I think because a lot of the kids came to the university with phones. So it wasn’t a matter of losing business to somebody else, they just didn’t include the wireless. That was about 1,200 net adds that we lost and impacted churn by about 10 basis points. So, pretty significant one quarter because it’s a large customer for us, but certainly understand the logic there.
Secondly, I would probably say the – even though our EV-DO network build has been incredibly smooth, as you are aware when you turn up a market, it takes about 30 to 60 days to optimize that network, and so you do see some changes in the experience that customers have during that period of time and I think that contributed to a little bit of uptick in churn. Obviously, as we get through all these then we’ll see that level out to much better levels.
And then, finally I’d probably say there may be a touch of the economy in here. But I think that’s probably the third and most remote driver for the reduction in sales and the increase in churn. We’re seeing a little bit of pressure on ARPU and a little bit of pressure on churn, but really the main drivers were the Marshall University and the network.
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