AT&T's Q2: IPTV, business services save the wireline day

AT&T's (NYSE: T) Q2 wireline market segment results once again show how much IP-based services, in particular its U-Verse suite and business services, have on the future growth of a segment that's battling an emerging set of competitive forces.

From an overall financial perspective, AT&T's Q2 profit increased to $4 billion, up from $3.2 billion from Q2 2009. Company revenue rose from $30.6 billion in the same quarter last year to $30.8 billion in Q2 2010.

Fueled by the ongoing expansion of U-Verse services, sustained revenue growth in strategic IP-based business services and cost management, AT&T's wireline segment revenue reported revenue of $5.4 billion in total revenue, which is flat when compared to Q2 09 results. However, total wireline revenues showed their smallest year-over-year decline in five quarters of 3.7 percent.   

Consumer wireline revenues were up 1.1 percent--the second consecutive quarter of sequential growth. A big contributor to consumer wireline growth was the addition of 209,000 new U-Verse TV subscribers during the quarter. In total, AT&T now has 2.5 million U-Verse subscribers, a 60 percent increase from 2009. U-Verse High Speed Internet attach rate ran about 90 percent, while about two-thirds of subscribers took U-Verse voice and more than three-fourths of AT&T U-Verse subscribers have a triple- or quad play option from AT&T.

While many business customers are starting to come out of the recent economic downturn, AT&T's business market unit saw a series of hits and misses during Q2. Overall business revenues were $9.6 billion, down 4.7 percent in comparison to Q2 09 and business service revenues were down 4.0 percent.

However, there were some signs of life in AT&T's Business Market unit. Once again, growth in IP VPN revenues drove up business IP data revenues by 9.1 percent, which generated total business data growth of 0.3 percent, the first growth in this category in five quarters. A big contributor to AT&T's business IP revenue results was the ongoing migration of AT&T's Frame Relay customers transitioning to IP-based solutions. During the quarter, about 70 percent of AT&T's business customers made the Frame Relay to IP transition.

For more:
- see the earnings release here
- Reuters has this article

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