AT&T made $30.1 billion in its third quarter, nearly doubling its revenue figure from the third quarter of 2006. Those numbers don’t take into account the acquisition of BellSouth, however, nor the full consolidation of Cingular, which had been a joint venture between the merged companies.
Taking that into account, AT&T’s revenue was up a less eye-popping but still respectable 3.2 percent from last year – and up 1.8 percent from the previous quarter.
Driving growth were business services (including broadband, Ethernet, and IP services) and wireless, where AT&T added 2 million customers, for a total of 65.7 million. The company reported wireless data revenues increased 63.9 percent from the like quarter a year ago, driven by increases in both consumer and business data usage including messaging, media bundles, laptop connectivity, smart phone connectivity and enterprise vertical market solutions.
Healthy sales of the Apple iPhone undoubtedly played a part in AT&T’s wireless success.
As for U-verse, the company said it was signing up new TV subscribers at a rate of 10,000 a week by the end of the quarter – but averaged fewer; AT&T had 51,000 TV subscribers at the end of Q2, and 126,000 at the end of Q3. The company is actually doing better with DBS video – it added 140,000 satellite TV customers in the quarter.
AT&T’s high-speed Internet connections, which include DSL, AT&T U-verse high-speed Internet and satellite broadband services, increased by 499,000 in the quarter to reach 13.8 million, up 2.2 million, or 18.6 percent, over the past year. The company didn’t break out the numbers of DSL and U-verse broadband subs.
