Nextel Posts Subscriber Growth

Nextel Communications Inc. on Tuesday said it had added 2.9 million subscribers to its wireless network.

Paul Saleh, executive vice president and chief financial officer, told attendees at the Smith Barney Citigroup Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference in Phoenix that the company ended 2004 with 16.2 million subscribers, including 15 million for Nextel and 1.2 million for the youth-oriented division Boost Mobile.

During the fourth quarter of the year, Nextel added 595,000 subscribers, and Boost 360,000 customers. Nextel is scheduled to release full-year results in February.

For the full year, Next added 2.2 million Nextel subscribers and 755,000 Boost customers, Saleh said.

"To support this and future growth, we also recently completed the nationwide deployment of the new voice coder software which will lead to nearly doubling our cellular capacity," Saleh said.