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COPYRIGHT 2001 Crain Communications, Inc.
As concerns continue to mount over the health of the U.S. economy, backed by mostly negative third-quarter numbers, wireless carriers appear to have weathered the storm fairly well, with results last week from carriers serving both the consumer and business market showing positive gains.
AT&T Wireless, which serves a broad mix of both business and consumer users, said it added 748,000 consolidated net additions for the third quarter, at the high end of its 700,000 to 750,000 net additions guidance and slightly ahead of analysts' expectations. The carrier ended the quarter with 17.1 million consolidated net subscribers, a 35-percent increase from last year.
AT&T Wireless slightly downgraded its guidance for the fourth quarter, noting it expects to add 900,000 to 1 million subscribers instead of the 1 million net subscriber adds previously forecast, due to the challenging nature of the current economy.
Another positive for the carrier's subscriber additions was the predominance of postpaid customers in relation to prepaid customers, which declined for the quarter. Postpaid customers are often considered higher quality since they typically have higher average revenue per user and lower churn.
"The strength of postpaid vs. prepaid is in line with the company's strategy of focusing on acquiring high quality-customers, as...
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