SMS wrote:
> Dennis Ferguson wrote:
>
>> Note that it shouldn't surprise anyone (or be interpreted as an
>> "iPhone effect") if AT&T adds significantly more than 1.3 million
>> total customers in the most recent quarter. I don't know why 1.3
>> million would be "expected". AT&T did add only 1.3 million net
>> customers in the previous quarter, but that included a one-time
>> not-to-be-repeated loss of 600,000 TDMA customers when they shut that
>> network down in February.
>
> Did a larger percentage of those 600K customers go elsewhere?
>
> A "normal" quarter for AT&T sees closer to
>> 2 million customers added, if they do significantly less than that
>> this time around then something is really screwed up.
>
> 4Q2007 they added 2.7 million (though unlike Verizon, a large number of
> these were prepaid and MVNO).
>
> 2Q2007 they were at 1.5 million additions. Since 4Q includes Xmas and
> the numbers are higher than in 2Q.
>
> [Removing alt.cellular.cingular, Cingular no longer exists]

Pretty poor results for AT&T today, 1.33 million net additions, worse
than 2Q 2007, worse than 4Q 2007, and much poorer than Verizon. But the
numbers are misleading. Of the 1.33 million customers AT&T added,
894,000 were postpaid, 439,000 were prepaid or MVNO. Of the 1.5 million
net additions for Verizon, only about 300,000 were postpaid, and about
1.2 million were postpaid.

Of course the original iPhone was out of stock for much of the second
quarter, and the 3G iPhone hadn't yet been released. 3Q should be much
better.