AT&T says customers are returning to pre-pandemic behavior
Postpaid phone churn, or the percentage of AT&T subscribers that left a postpaid phone account for one with another provider, was .84%. That was up from the postpaid phone churn of .72% recorded during the same quarter last year. AT&T commented on this by stating that the rise in churn was “due to a return to pre-pandemic consumer behavior as well as recent pricing actions.
AT&T’s mobility business showed strong revenue and EBITDA gains
Prepaid churn, which is substantially higher than postpaid churn due to the month-to-month nature of the prepaid business, was under 3% for the third quarter. AT&T also said that Cricket’s churn rate was “substantially lower.”
AT&T now has 69 million postpaid phone subscribers
On a year-over-year basis, AT&T’s mobility revenue rose 6% to $20.3 billion thanks to higher gross from service and equipment. Service revenue weighed in at $15.3 billion, up 5.6% on an annual basis due to growth in subscriber and postpaid ARPU. Equipment revenue rose 7.2% to $4.9 billion for the quarter thanks to higher sales of smartphones along with a higher mix of more expensive handsets.
AT&T CEO Stanky says that the carrier is “investing at record levels” to enhance its 5G connectivity
The executive added, “Our disciplined go-to-market approach is helping drive healthy subscriber growth with high-quality customers. As a result, we now expect to achieve wireless service revenue growth in the upper end of the 4.5 percent to 5 percent range. We remain confident in our ability to achieve, or surpass, all our financial commitments for the year, while still investing to bring our customers the industry’s best services.”
Verizon remains the number one wireless carrier in the United States followed by T-Mobile, and AT&T. Verizon is expected to report its third quarter earnings tomorrow, October 21st, at 7:30 am ET. T-Mobile will report its Q3 results on October 27th, one week from today, at approximately 4:05 pm ET.
