Yesterday saw Verizon detailing how their first quarter of 2015 (Q1) has gone, with their big headliner being that they saw a drop in their churn rate compared to what it has been in the past. In fact, yesterday’s news saw Verizon reporting their churn rate decreasing from 1.07 down to 1.03. Well, today’s Q1 news is now coming in and this time it is from AT&T. In terms of a direct comparison, AT&T are reporting that Q1 of 2015 was for them, their lowest ever first quarter churn rate which equated to a rate of 1.02. In terms of the more major aspects of the AT&T press release (source link below), AT&T are reporting Q1 saw their combined revenue (wireless and wired) coming in at $32.6 billion. This represented an overall small increase year-on-year of 0.3 percent.
In terms of the wireless market, AT&T notes a total of $18.2 billion in wireless revenues for the quarter. Which again was reported as an increase year-on-year, although this time at the higher rate of 1.8-percent. In spite of the increase in wireless revenues, AT&T are also reporting a decrease year-on-year in terms of wireless service revenues, which was down 3.7 percent to $14.8 billion. Likewise, their operating income was also down 12 percent year-over-year, which came in at $4.4 billion. Not to mention, their operating expenses were up 7.2 percent year-on-year at $13.7 billion.
In terms of subscribers, AT&T noted they added 1.2 million wireless connections in the first quarter. However, the sheer majority (945,000) came from connected devices, of which 684,000 were connected cars. The release does also detail though that AT&T added 441,000 postpaid subscribers, which was more than the 400,000 which has been previously predicted by analysts, prior to the results being revealed. The rest of the difference was made up of 98,000 gains in subscribers which was “primarily due to continued growth in Cricket’s smartphone base” coupled with the loss of 266,000 reseller subscribers, which was “primarily due to losses in low-end subscribers“. In addition, AT&T note they saw smartphone gross add and upgrades for Q1 totaling 6.2 million while their AT&T Next program saw an increase of nearly two-thirds. You can read the full press release by clicking the source link below.