AT&T mobile data revenues up nearly $1 billion in Q1

Despite a first-quarter earnings decline of 21 percent resulting from charges related to new federal healthcare laws, AT&T continued to grow its wireless subscriber base, adding 1.9 million new customers--its highest Q1 total ever. AT&T earned $2.48 billion or 42 cents per share in the first quarter, down from $3.13 billion/53 cents a year earlier--excluding items, the operator earned 59 cents per share, surpassing the average forecast of 54 cents per share by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Subscribers now total 87 million, growth credited to rapid adoption of smartphones alongside connected devices like ereaders, GPS units and alarm monitoring systems.

AT&T reports that the number of postpaid 3G integrated devices across its network jumped by 3.3 million in Q1, its sixth consecutive quarter with an increase exceeding 3 million. As of the end of the quarter, roughly half of AT&T's 65.1 million postpaid subscribers own integrated devices, up from 31.9 percent in Q1 2009. AT&T activated 2.7 million new iPhones in Q1, more than a third of them for customers new to the company.

AT&T's wireless data revenues leaped $947 million to $4.1 billion, up 29.8 percent over the year-ago quarter. Postpaid subscriber ARPU grew 3.9 percent over the year-earlier quarter to $61.89--the fifth consecutive quarter AT&T has posted a year-over-year increase in postpaid ARPU. Postpaid data ARPU reached $20.13, up 21.9 percent over Q1 2009. Text messages increased by more than 50 percent compared to Q1 2009, growing to more than 143 billion, and multimedia messages more than doubled to about 2.4 billion. AT&T adds its wireless data revenues have nearly doubled over the past two years.

For more on AT&T's Q1 2010 results:
- read this release

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