Verizon Wireless adds 1.5M customers

Verizon Wireless executives said this morning that the operator is weathering the strong economic uncertainty and fails to show any signs of weakness. The company reported that first quarter net adds were 1.5 million, bringing its total subscriber base to 67.2 million. That's down from 2 million net adds in fourth quarter 2007. Revenues totaled $11.7 billion, up 13.2 percent year over year.  Here's a breakdown of the other key metrics:  

ARPU: Retail ARPU was $51.40, up 1.3 percent year over year. However, this is slightly down from fourth quarter 2007 when the operator had an ARPU of $51.49.   

Data: Data ARPU was $11.94, up from $11.06 in fourth quarter 2007. Data now represents 23 percent of total service revenue up from 17.5 percent a year ago.  Data revenues were $2.3 billion. The company had 48.1 million retain data customers in March, accounting for 74 percent of the retail customer base.  

Churn: Total churn is 1.19 percent, down from 1.2 percent total churn in fourth quarter 2007.  Retail post-paid churn is 0.93 percent, down from 0.94 percent in fourth quarter.  

700 MHz spectrum: Verizon executives say that the company increased its spectrum inventory by 60 percent thanks to its wins in the 700 MHz spectrum auction.  

Content: Verizon Wireless customers sent or received more than 58 billion text messages and 1.1 billion picture/video messages. Customers downloaded 34.6 million songs and videos.  

For more,
- see this Verizon press release

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Carrier Metrics: Churn, ARPU and subs for 2007. Wireless carrier metrics.