Sprint's the only major US carrier yet to lose money this quarter, despite record subscribers

Sprint posted its fourth quarter earnings report for 2013 with highlights including the highest number of subscribers ever for the company. The third-place carrier reports a loss of $1 billion, which is less than the $1.3 billion it lost in the same quarter in 2013. Sprint now has 53.9 million subscribers, its highest number ever, after adding 58,000 post-paid subscribers, 322,000 prepaid subscribers, and 302,000 wholesale subscribers last quarter. For network news, Sprint now claims to cover 200 million people with LTE and has its Sprint Spark service in 14 markets. Sprint's LTE network is still far behind competitors such as AT&T, Verizon, and even fourth-place carrier T-Mobile, though it expects to cover 250 million people by the middle of 2014. The carrier says it will have its high-speed Spark service in 100 cities within the next three years. Sprint says it sold 5.6 million smartphones in Q4, but doesn't break down how many were for each platform. For the year, the carrier sold 20.5 million smartphones. Ninety-five percent of Sprint's postpaid customers purchased smartphones, compared to 93 percent at AT&T and 88.9 percent at Verizon. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that he was in support of further consolidation within the wireless industry, so long as it doesn't involve AT&T and Verizon.