The largest U.S. wireless operator reported strong subscriber and revenue growth in fourth quarter 2007. Wireless revenues totaled $11.4 billion, up 16.3 percent over the year-ago quarter. Service revenues were $10.2 billion. Here's a rundown of other key metrics:
Growth: AT&T [1] added 2.7 million net wireless subscribers, up 13.5 percent from fourth quarter 2006. In addition, gross adds totaled 6 million, up 9.6 percent from the year-earlier fourth quarter. At year-end AT&T's total wireless subscriber base was 70.1 million.
ARPU: ARPU was up 2 percent to $50.28. AT&T said this was the sixth consecutive quarter that it has reported ARPU growth.
Data: Data revenues increased 57.5 percent over the year-ago quarter. The total data revenue is now $2 billion, up from $1.3 billion a year ago. Data now accounts for $12 of postpaid ARPU and it makes up 19.9 percent of AT&T's total wireless service revenue. During the quarter, AT&T customers sent 496 million MMS and 32 billion text messages.
iPhone: At year-end AT&T had 2 million iPhone customers on its network and 40 percent of those customers were new to AT&T. In December, the company doubled its iPhone sales as compared to sales in October and November.
TDMA: AT&T will shut down its TDMA network at the end of February. The operator moved 390,000 subscribers off the network in fourth quarter and there are about 390,000 subscribers that remain on the TDMA network. AT&T says most of those are wholesale customers. -Sue
For more on AT&T's quarter:
- read this press release [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/tags/t
[2] http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/t-delivers-strong-fourth-quarter-reaffirms-2008-and-multi-year-outlook