While AT&T may be boasting about the wireless side of the business in its 2Q results, Ma Bell 2.0 is still very dependent on its copper cables.
True, wireless revenue has been doing the growing, rising to $14.1 billion over the last three months and 7% ahead of last year’s numbers.
Other good news: AT&T claims over 3.5 million iPhone activations this past quarter, in spite of sharing this market with its cousin, Verizon.
Bottom line: AT&T’s operating income for wireless this past quarter was over $4 billion, compared to the wired side’s “mere” $2 billion.
As carriers and the FCC currently review pulling the plug on POTS, it’s a good time to look again at all the revenue that remains in voice and POIS (Plain Old Internet Service).
Of course, wireline is being challenged by declining voice revenue, which is down almost $1 billion from 2Q10. AT&T’s U-verse, their fiber-to-the-node service, is relieving some of the red ink, having achieved over 200,000 new subscribers this past quarter and ringing up a couple hundred million dollars at the cash register.
AT&T’s longer term strategy is to move consumers to U-Verse’s bundling of voice-video-data, freeing themselves from the shackles of the Communications Act’s Title II restrictions. They will have much work to do in the community relations area, as they try to get residents across America to accept U-verse’s refrigerator-size fiber-to-copper DSLAMs.
For your viewing pleasures, here’s a chart of AT&T wired revenues and income for the last few quarters:
Related articles
- Twilight of POTS Regulation (technoverseblog.com)
- AT&T’s Q2 Results (att.com)
- AT&T’s U-verse Boxes Approved by San Francisco (huffingtonpost.com)
