Still, there is is a silver lining here. If you count prepaid and wholesale, Sprint gained 590,000 customers. It also notes that its postpaid cellphone losses slowed by about 60 percent in September, helped in part by the network's "most successful" iPhone launch ever. This suggests that the telecom may already be turning a corner, and Sprint suggests as much when it hopes to gain postpaid phone users in the fall. However, the real test of Claure's worth may take longer than that -- it could be a while before we know whether or not Claure's aggressive pricing and cost-cutting are enough to lure people back to Big Yellow.

[Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]