Sprint Nextel customers say the company is taking much better care of them than six months ago, the latest J.D. Power survey says.

Sprint was also the only company to improve substantially.

The only problem: Sprint still lags its competitors in the semi-annual survey.

"Overall wireless customer care performance has improved considerably as customers report shorter hold times and improved rates of problem resolution on the first contact," the customer satisfaction survey company said in a release today.

What it doesn't point out is that nearly all of the improvement comes from Sprint. The industry average is up, from 723 six months ago to 735 now. But the leaders -- Alltel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless are tied at 747 on the survey's 1,000-point scale -- averaged nearly 750 just six months ago.

The real improvement comes from Sprint, up nearly 50 points, from 657 six months ago to 704 now. No. 4 AT&T also improved, from 722 to 730.

So, Sprint is still fifth out of five companies in the survey. But if it took a similar leap in the next six months, it would be No. 1.

Sprint said the J.D. Power improvement was in line with its own research.

"We continue to make real progress and we’re gaining quickly on our competitors in customer care performance," said Roni Singleton, a Sprint public relations manager. "In addition to 19 consecutive months of customer satisfaction and first call resolution improvements, we're answering customers' calls faster, usually within 30 seconds or less. Also, the number of calls we receive per subscriber is significantly lower, an indication that we are eliminating the reasons customers call us with service issues in the first place."

Read the J.D. Power release here.