Continued growth from AT&T's wireless unit helped offset the impact of a weak economy as the operator beat analyst estimates for the first quarter, posting earnings of $3.12 billion, down 9.7 percent year-over-year from $3.46 billion. Revenue slipped 0.6 percent in Q1 to $30.6 billion. AT&T reports its total wireless subscriber count grew 1.2 million to 78.2 million--retail postpaid net adds increased by 875,000, up 24.1 percent versus results in Q1 2008. The carrier activated more than 1.6 million iPhone 3G devices during the first quarter, adding that the number of postpaid wireless subscribers with integrated devices more than doubled over the past year: Close to 32 percent of AT&T's 61.0 million postpaid subscribers now own integrated devices.

Total postpaid ARPU increased 2.1 percent to $59.21 versus Q1 2008, marking the ninth consecutive quarter AT&T has posted a year-over-year increase in postpaid ARPU. Postpaid data ARPU increased to $16.48 in the first quarter, up 26.8 percent compared to year-ago totals--in all, wireless data revenues grew 38.6 percent to $3.2 billion, representing 27.2 percent of AT&T's wireless service revenues for the quarter. AT&T credited the increase to messaging, Internet access, email, access to applications and related services. AT&T subscribers sent more than 94 billion text messages during the first quarter, more than double the total for the year-ago quarter.

For more on AT&T's Q1 results:
- read this release [1]

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AT&T [3]'s Q3 wireless data revenues soar 50 percent