Verizon Wireless adds 2M customers

Verizon Wireless reported a strong fourth quarter 2007 with 2 million net customer additions, bringing its total subscriber base to 65.7 million. Of those, 63.7 million are retail customers. On the revenue front, Verizon Wireless fourth quarter revenue was $11.4 billion, a 13.3 percent increase year over year.  Here's a breakdown of other key metrics:

Churn: Verizon has 1.2 percent total churn, down from 1.27 percent churn in third quarter 2007. The carrier had just 0.94 percent retail post-paid churn, down from 0.96 percent postpaid churn in third quarter.  

ARPU: Retail ARPU was $51.49, up 1.4 percent over third quarter.   

Data: Total data revenue for fourth quarter was $2.1 billion. Data ARPU was $11.06, up from $10.59 in third quarter. The company had 47.2 million retail data customers in December, which is 74 percent of the retail customer base.  In addition, the company says that more than half of its customer base, 35 million, have a broadband-capable device.  

Content: During fourth quarter Verizon customers sent or received nearly 45 billion text messages and 927 million picture/video messages. Customers also completed 30 million music and video downloads. 

During this morning's earnings call, analysts questioned the firm about what impact the current economic slowdown is having on the operator. Verizon executives said that they have not seen a change in sales expectations but they are monitoring the situation carefully. -Sue

For more on Verizon's Q4:
- check out our complete wireless, wireline, mobile content and telcoTV coverage
[1]- also read Verizon's press release [2]