Not yet ready to make its full financial disclosure for the first quarter of 2013, T-Mobile has nonetheless decided to release some preliminary customer churn numbers to show its improving performance. Having spent most of the past few years losing customers, the company's rather delighted to disclose that in Q1 of this year it actually saw an improvement in net customer growth. That increase was a paltry 3,000 in terms of new clientele on the T-Mobile-branded service, however once you include MVNO and other unbranded users of its network, the net number is a far more satisfying 579,000.

As CEO John Legere points out, even the infinitesimally small growth in total T-Mobile customers is notable, as it's a marked improvement from the previous quarter's net loss of 349,000. Plus it's the first time in some four years where T-Mobile's branded services have added more customers than they've lost. This stabilization of customer numbers has taken place in advance of the network operator's big "Uncarrier" event last week, showing that it was already doing a few things right. The big hope now is that the new and differentiated services T-Mobile offers will drive it on to some real growth.