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NEW YORK – T-Mobile USA forfeited a achievement number of subscribers in the prototypal threesome months of the year, move a conundrum for regulators as they countenance at whether to permit AT&T Inc. acquire the small traveler for $39 billion.

The discussion against the care is that it would eliminate digit competitor in the wireless industry. But judging by results reported Friday, T-Mobile isn't competing successfully.

T-Mobile, the smallest of the quaternary domestic carriers, forfeited a net 471,000 subscribers on contract-based plans. It was healthy to add subscribers finished wholesalers, who pay such less than contract-signing customers, but it still forfeited 99,000 overall. Both figures are achievement losses for T-Mobile, the Bellevue, Wash.-based subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany.

"There's no gleaming blot in these numbers," said Roger Entner, a telecommunications shrink at Recon Analytics.

T-Mobile's quarterly income fell to the take it was at threesome eld ago, just before it got a increase by purchase a small regional carrier. In the same period, AT&T's wireless income grew 29 proportionality (it, too, was aided by some secondary acquisitions).

AT&T announced the care to acquire T-Mobile in March. Regulators are due to pay a assemblage or more scrutinizing the care before determining whether to country it or earmark it to travel with substantial conditions.

Among the top quaternary wireless carriers, the prototypal quarter's subscriber results distinction up neatly in visit of traveler size. Verizon Wireless, No. 1, did the best, followed in descending visit by AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile.

It's a dissent of the grandness of bit in an business where ontogeny has slowed now that almost every dweller has a phone. The seven largest carriers provide service to 307 meg devices in a country that has 309 meg people.

To gain high-paying subscribers, sound companies hit to poach them from rivals. The largest carriers hit better access to the most attractive phones — the iPhone accounts for such of the vantage at Verizon Wireless and AT&T. They also hit more money to raise and expand their networks.

The No. 3 and No. 4 carriers, T-Mobile and Sprint, are losing subscribers. Sprint was peaked for eld while T-Mobile did relatively well. Sprint is turning around, but its results are far from matching those of AT&T and Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile started losing subscribers a assemblage and a half ago, a artefact that seems to be accelerating.

That puts regulators who poverty to impact rivalry in a arduous position. If they country the integration to preserves competition, they venture watching T-Mobile fall into irrelevance.

"Almost the poorest abstract that crapper happen for the subscribers of T-Mobile is the integration not happening," Entner said. There's no way, he said, to obligate parent consort Deutsche Telekom to equip sufficiency in the meshwork to make it competitive with AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

If regulators earmark the merger, they would increase the coverall upbeat of the business by hitching T-Mobile's fortunes to those of AT&T's. But consumers would hit threesome domestic carriers to opt from, instead of four.

AT&T's arguments in favor of the integration are heavily supported on the benefits of scale. It would be healthy to market its smartphone lineup, including the iPhone, to T-Mobile's customers. AT&T also promises to make more economical use of T-Mobile's wireless spectrum, adding it to its possess plans to create a newborn high-speed wireless accumulation network.

AT&T also points discover that aside from the domestic carriers, smaller, regional ones substance rivalry in most places. Two of them, MetroPCS Communciations Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc., added more than a meg customers combined in the prototypal quarter.

The ornament of results in the prototypal lodge plays straight into the hands of AT&T's arguments for the merger, said wife Arbogast, an shrink who follows telecommunications issues in Washington.

"They don't need to exhibit that T-Mobile is in decline, but it doesn't hurt," she said.

Although regulators are unlikely to entertainer conclusions from a single three-month period, continuing slummy performance from T-Mobile finished the rest of the assemblage strength change intellection at the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, she said.

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Peter Svensson crapper be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

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