AT&T Subscribers Still Cutting the Wires
More evidence surfaced today of the continued migration to wireless communications from wireline. AT&T released its first quarter earnings, and virtually all of its growth was in the wireless segement of its business.
For instance, the company now claims 71.36 million wireless subscribers. That’s up 14.7 percent from the 62.21 million it claimed a year ago.
I would assume that much of that growth was generated by a huge number of iPhone buyers who ported their wireless service over to AT&T from another carrier so they could use the Apple technology.
Apple reported that first quarter 2008 sales of the iPhone totaled 2.3 million. That’s in addition to the 2.3 million it reported that it sold in the fourth quarter of last year.
The wireless segment earned AT&T $2.9 billion in income for the quarter, up a whopping 95.5 percent over the 2007 period.
By contast, the number of ”switched access lines” AT&T provided at the close of the quarer was 60.4 million, down 7.7 percent from the 65.4 million claimed in 2007. Wireline earnings declined 2.1 percent to $2.83 billion from $2.89 billion a year ago.
Other tidbits to glean from the earnings report: The total number of U-verse television service subscribers now stands a 379,000, almost all of those signed up in the past year.
Jim Stafford
Business News Reporter
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