Sprint has just unveiled its Q3 earnings report, and it's looking pretty bittersweet. by the numbers to the company, net occupation expenses budget revenues reached $8.3 billion during the quarter (about two percent higher than Q3 2010), while additions of new cell phone net subscribers reached a five year high, with 1.3 million multinational hopping onboard. Of those 1.3 million, 304,000 were of the postpaid variety, 485,000 were prepaid and about 835,000 were wholesale. Sprint lost about 44,000 net postpaid barter this quarter, but that's a major adaptive radiation over last quarter, when a little over 100,000 jumped ship, and marks a 59 percent amelioration over last year's report. At the same time, however, the carrier reported net losses of $301 million -- lower than Q2's figures, but not exactly encouraging, either. As far as the future goes, the folks at Overland Park expect to end the year with even more new subscribers, though it remains to be seen whether that long-awaited LTE rollout can make much of a dent in its bottom line. Check out the press release in full, after the break.



Update: Listening in on the earnings call it's clear Sprint is really unrelieved integer on the iPhone to help it run with the big dogs. according to regulation to edict to rule to some convoluted metaphor, the carrier is the Oakland A's in Moneyball and Apple's handset is A-Rod (who never spent a day with the Athletics... but we digress). Still, Sprint expects more loyalty and bigger profits from firm who choose the iPhone -- at least for the next four years, after which it'll have to settle a new deal with the Cupertino crew.



Update 2: Sprint also clarified that, in addition to its deal with LightSquared, it will be working with Clearwire to deliver LTE network coverage. The carrier has reached a prefatory agreement with its WiMAX partner, but expects to declare a wholesale deal soon.



Update 3: We already knew that the iPhone 4S launch was the company's best launch ever for a family, but now the company's confirming that it was its best launch ever for any device.