Verizon's customer churn is up slightly, but they are still ahead of AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Fourth-quarter churn for Verizon's post-paid customers was 1.05 percent, up by 0.02 percent from the previous quarter. AT&T maintained its third-quarter level of 1.20 percent.
Sprint slipped to 2.16 percent, up from 2.15 percent in the third-quarter but an improvement on the 2.29 percent for the fourth-quarter of 2007. T-Mobile was steady at 2.4 percent.
Alex Dannin, an analyst at Morningstar, believes that Verizon is focusing on what is important. "People want to be on the best network, and Verizon seems to get that. AT&T is worrying about services."
According to Alan Nichols, also from Morningstar, Marketing is an important factor. "They have a clear message, and they have a good family plan."
T-Mobile's spot at the bottom of the list comes despite their victory in the J.D. Power and Associates report on wireless customer care performance, which ranks carriers on their telephone, retail and Web service.
"T-Mobile won that award a few times but hasn't benefited from it. To some people customer care is important, but T-Mobile has the worst network and dropped calls are even more important," said Nichols.
T-Mobile experienced a surge in pre-paid customers in 2008. Prepaid carriers generally experience higher churn rate. New T-Mobile prepaid customers numbered 355,000 for the quarter, up from 218,000 for the same period in 2007.