Sprint Corp. has touted adding new wireless connections for six straight quarters. What it didn’t say until now is that many of those gains were free lines or existing customers that switched services.

With its proposed merger with T-Mobile US Inc. under pressure, the wireless carrier told regulators this week that its performance isn’t as strong as it appears and it will struggle to operate as a stand-alone company.

The recent gains in so-called postpaid connections—a closely watched measure of monthly accounts not paid in advance—were driven by free lines given to existing Sprint customers, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing dated Monday. The tally also includes tablet connections and customers switching their phones from Sprint’s prepaid services.

Those aren’t new Sprint customers. The No. 4 U.S. carrier by subscribers lost lucrative postpaid handset connections last quarter and expects to lose them for the entirety of the fiscal year that ended in March, excluding the prepaid-to-postpaid customer shifts, according to the filing.

When it reported results for the last three months of 2018, Sprint highlighted that it had 309,000 total postpaid net additions, a year-on-year improvement. Sprint entered 2019 with 32.6 million postpaid connections and 8.8 million prepaid connections.

“While these public statements and the individual metrics cited are all accurate, they are incomplete,” according to the filing by Sprint’s lawyers to the Federal Communications Commission, which was partly redacted. A Sprint spokeswoman declined to comment.


It isn’t unusual for companies that have agreed to be acquired to claim that they have a brighter future with their suitor. Sprint, however, has increasingly stressed a narrative that it can’t survive on its own.

In the same document, Sprint cites an analyst report suggesting that even entering into chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to restructure its balance sheet wouldn’t help long-term. “Sprint is in a very difficult situation that is only getting worse,” the filing said. “Sprint is not on a sustainable competitive path.”

The filing states that the company’s board was told in January meetings that “many of Sprint’s most recent commercial metrics were well below plan and trending downward.” At a March 29 board meeting, CEO Michel Combes told directors that “Sprint is losing relevance with its customers.”

Jeffrey Jacobovitz, chairman of the antitrust and competition practice at Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, said the approach wasn’t unusual. “It’s somewhat common in terms of a potential defense to the government challenging a merger,” he said.


If such disclosures by a company are inconsistent with its public filings, however, it could cause problems with securities regulators, Mr. Jacobovitz added.

An excerpt from Sprint’s Monday filing with the FCC.

Jeffrey Moore, a telecom-industry analyst and principal of Wave7 Research, said many of the free lines at Sprint came from a long-running promotion that offered five phone lines for $100 a month. In some cases the carrier also gave away free phones.

Sprint sales representatives pitch free lines and free phones “as something you can use for gift giving, something you can give to your favorite aunt, something to use as a spare line if you lose your phone,” said Mr. Moore.

“It’s entirely possible that there are some lines that aren’t necessarily attached to a person,” he added, noting that those additions would add connections but not revenue for Sprint.


Some Wall Street analysts have warned that buy-one-get-one, or BOGO, smartphone sales have been artificially boosting metrics for Sprint and other carriers for more than a year.

Telecom consultant New Street Research estimated that customers signing unneeded wireless contracts to pocket more valuable smartphones added 1.7 million “fake” lines to cellphone carriers’ tallies in 2018.

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“We believe that BOGOs have added significant numbers of fake lines to reported customer counts since late 2017,” the firm wrote in a March note to clients.

Sprint’s claims come as executives from the carrier and T-Mobile meet in Washington for further talks with Justice Department and FCC officials.


The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that antitrust enforcement staff members recently told T-Mobile and Sprint executives they are unlikely to bless the deal as it is currently structured.

In a tweet, T-Mobile CEO John Legere characterized the premise of the article as “simply untrue.” Marcelo Claure, Sprint’s executive chairman, also disputed the article and said discussions with regulators were continuing.

Since the deal was announced last year, Sprint has walked a line between touting network improvements, plus plans to upgrade to a faster 5G network, while stressing that it lacks the financial strength to grow on its own.

The Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year asked Sprint to clarify how its public claims that it is unable to develop a nationwide 5G network on its own without being bought by T-Mobile “reconcile with certain statements made by Sprint’s management prior to the merger announcement.”

The regulator in one letter to the carrier cited a February 2018 tweet from Mr. Claure, who was then CEO, stating that Sprint would launch 5G wireless service nationwide in the first half of 2019. The deal with T-Mobile wasn’t struck until April 2018.

Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com and Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com