AT&T's (NYSE: T) revenue and profits rose up in Q3 with gains in its wireless business, U-verse and IP-based business services. Overall, AT&T reports $31.6 billion in revenues, up 2.8 percent or $847 million, from Q3 2009.
While wireless continues to be the star performer for AT&T, the wireline segment benefitted in Q3 with the first year-over-year growth in consumer revenues in over two years, ongoing expansion of U-verse services and sustained strategic business service growth.
Here's a breakdown of the other AT&T wireline segment metrics:
- Consumer wireline: An uptick in IP data services drove up helped drive consumer revenues up 0.2 percent from Q3 2009 to $5.3 billion. A big contributor of this growth was AT&T's U-verse data and video services. During the third quarter, AT&T signed up 236,000 new U-verse TV subscribers, bringing its total to 2.7 million video subscribers. On the broadband data side, AT&T added 148,000 new wireline broadband subscribers during the quarter. Overall U-verse revenues were $1.1 billion, 84.5 percent higher than Q3 2009.
- Landline loss: Typical of all wireline carriers, AT&T's consumer revenue connections declined in Q3 because of traditional PSTN line loss, which was partially offset by "increases in broadband, U-verse TV and VoIP connections. Wireline consumer TV and broadband connections increased by 343,000 in Q3 and 1.3 million over the past four quarters, while U-verse voice connections increased by 166,000 in the quarter and 759,000 over the past four quarters. At the end of the third quarter, AT&T had 43.7 million consumer revenue connections, a decline from the 45.7 million it had at the end of the third quarter of 2009 and 44.3 million at the end of the second quarter of 2010.
- Business services: Following one of the worst economic recessions since the depression, AT&T reported that it posted $9.5 billion in total business revenues, a 3.9 decline versus Q3 2009. Excluding CPE, business service revenues were also down 3.7 percent year over year and decreased slightly sequentially, down 1.3 percent. One bright spot in AT&T Business services results was IP revenues. Led by VPN revenue growth, business IP data revenues grew eight percent overall. To date, about 70 percent of AT&T's Frame Relay customers have migrated to IP-based business solutions, which will enable them to take advantage of new services such as network security, cloud services and IP conferencing.
Overall, AT&T's wireless business fared well in Q3. Led by improved consumer and business customer trends, total wireline revenues posted their smallest year-over-year decline in six quarters, down 3 percent, and down slightly sequentially.
For more:
- see the release
- here's FierceIPTV's take
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