Verizon adds 1.5M net customers in 2Q

The gloomy economic outlook appears to have little impact on Verizon Wireless--at least not yet. The wireless carrier, which reported its second quarter earnings today, added 1.5 million net new customers in the quarter bringing its total customer base to 68.7 million. This was the same amount of net new customers as the firm added in the first quarter of the year. During the firm's conference call with investors this morning, COO Denny Strigl said the company does not expect significant economic impact on its financial results in the second half of the year. Here's a breakdown of other key metrics for the quarter:

Revenue: The company's wireless service revenues were $12.1 billion, up 11.8 percent year over year.  Data revenue was $2.6 billion up from $2.3 billion in first quarter 2008.

ARPU: Average revenue per user was $51.53 for the quarter, up from $50.91 in first quarter 2008.  Total data ARPU was $12.58 up from $11.72 in the prior quarter.

Churn: Churn was 1.12 percent, a record low for the company. Among postpaid customers churn was 0.83 percent.

Messaging: During the quarter, Verizon customers sent or received 70 billion text messages and 1.4 billion picture messages. In addition, customers completed 36.5 million music and video downloads.

Devices: About 40.5 million Verizon customers now have 3G broadband-capable devices.

iPhone 3G: Strigl says that the firm is only seeing minimal, short-term impact from AT&T's recent introduction of the iPhone 3G.

For more:
- see this press release
[1]- see this report [2]

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