Verizon takes a larger share of the wireless market

The results are in for AT&T.

As expected, AT&T added 1.3 million new subscribers in Q2, for a total of
72.8 million subscribers.

As with other traditional phone companies, AT&T's wireline business was
hit hard, with a 2.6% decline in phone lines (60.4 million to 58.9
million). This was worse than the market expected, but the impact to
AT&T's overall profit margins was not as bad as expected, and AT&T shares
rose today.

As noted before, Verizon added 1.5 million subscribers in Q2, for a total
of 68.7 million subscribers.

The pending acquisition of Alltel will add 13 million subscribers to
Verizon, putting it ahead of AT&T, just as AT&T's acquisition of Dobson
Cellular One last year put AT&T ahead of Verizon.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On 2008-07-23, Mark Crispin <mrc@Panda.COM> wrote:
> The results are in for AT&T.
>
> As expected, AT&T added 1.3 million new subscribers in Q2, for a total of
> 72.8 million subscribers.

Whew, I don't think that's good. While they don't say it explicitly
I think their ARPU might have dropped a bit from last quarter too.

Dennis Ferguson

At 23 Jul 2008 11:32:43 -0700 Mark Crispin wrote:

> The pending acquisition of Alltel will add 13 million subscribers to
> Verizon, putting it ahead of AT&T, just as AT&T's acquisition of
> Dobson Cellular One last year put AT&T ahead of Verizon.


Didn't Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless put it ahead of Verizon a
few years ago? The Dobson acquisition was only a few million customers.

Although I really don't know why anyone cares about the "most subscribers"
total anyway. It's not like any of these carriers grew to these numbers
"naturally"- both AT&T and Verizon are amalgams of smaller regional
carriers created through mergers and acquisitions, Sprint acquired Nextel,
and T-Mobile was a bunch of smaller GSM carriers.

We're not talking about ground-up expansions of once small mom-n-pop
businesses acheiving national dominance one customer or store at a time
like Starbucks, McDonald's or Wal-Mart! Any company can become "biggest"
in their market via mergers and acquisitions...

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008, Todd Allcock posted:
> Didn't Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless put it ahead of Verizon a
> few years ago? The Dobson acquisition was only a few million customers.

Nope. The ATTWS acquisition put it close, but Dobson brought it over.

> Although I really don't know why anyone cares about the "most subscribers"
> total anyway.

I agree. That comment was just to tweak the noses of the fanboys who
think that there is something significant about AT&T currently having the
"most subscribers".

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:32:43 -0700, Mark Crispin <mrc@Panda.COM>
wrote:


>As with other traditional phone companies, AT&T's wireline business was
>hit hard, with a 2.6% decline in phone lines (60.4 million to 58.9
>million). This was worse than the market expected, but the impact to
>AT&T's overall profit margins was not as bad as expected, and AT&T shares
>rose today.

OUCH! I knew that cellular and VOIP were hurting landline business,
but not THAT bad.

Ugh... how much longer until the amount of ILEC landline customers
leaving will ease? Though I have cellular and VOIP, I consider those
to be either toys or just a nice convenience.

I'll still keep my landline, even if I drop most of the features on
there to bring the price down. Why? For or reliability and most
importantly, voice quality. Neither GSM or CDMA or any VOIP codec can
sound as well as a landline. They've come close in recent years, but
still don't sound as good as a traditional landline.

At 23 Jul 2008 17:49:35 -0400 Diamond Dave wrote:

> OUCH! I knew that cellular and VOIP were hurting landline business,
> but not THAT bad.


But does it really matter, since DSL represents half of broadband sales.
Does, for example, Qwest really care if I pay them $40/month for dry DSL
internet, (then use VoIP) instead of $30 for a landline? It's kind of like
why McDonald's sells salads and grilled chicken sandwiches- it replaces the
potential lost revenue of customers who don't like/want beef.

> Ugh... how much longer until the amount of ILEC landline customers
> leaving will ease? Though I have cellular and VOIP, I consider those
> to be either toys or just a nice convenience.


Agreed.

> I'll still keep my landline, even if I drop most of the features on
> there to bring the price down. Why? For or reliability and most
> importantly, voice quality. Neither GSM or CDMA or any VOIP codec can
> sound as well as a landline. They've come close in recent years, but
> still don't sound as good as a traditional landline.


Agreed again. But realistically it's a non-issue- the landline companies
have already diversified into internet, VoIP and cellular. Verizon isn't
really going to cry a river when a $30 landline customer dumps it for a $50
Verizon wireless cellular plan!

At 23 Jul 2008 14:29:30 -0700 Mark Crispin wrote:

> > Didn't Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless put it ahead of Verizon a
> > few years ago? The Dobson acquisition was only a few million customers.
>
> Nope. The ATTWS acquisition put it close, but Dobson brought it over.

A quick Google search confirmed my failing memory:
http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/cingular/20429/

Although Verizon has come close to toppling them, (I seem to recall them
roughly neck and neck at 60-65 million customers in late '06 or early '07,)
I believe Cingular/AT&T has maintained it's lead ever since the late 2004
merger.


> > Although I really don't know why anyone cares about the "most
> > subscribers" total anyway.
>
> I agree. That comment was just to tweak the noses of the fanboys
> who think that there is something significant about AT&T currently
> having the "most subscribers".


Fair enough- I wholeheartedly support tweaking the fanboys! ;-)

Besides, it's all academic anyway- I have it on good Oxythority than in 5
years all cellphone companies will be out of business and we'll all be
VoIPing each other for free on our iPhones over free nationwide WiFi...

....and occasionally ducking so we don't get hit in the head by all of the
flying pigs...

Todd Allcock wrote:

> Besides, it's all academic anyway- I have it on good Oxythority than in 5
> years all cellphone companies will be out of business and we'll all be
> VoIPing each other for free on our iPhones over free nationwide WiFi...

You mean you're not doing that already?

At 23 Jul 2008 16:22:44 -0700 SMS wrote:

> > Besides, it's all academic anyway- I have it on good Oxythority than in
5
> > years all cellphone companies will be out of business and we'll all be
> > VoIPing each other for free on our iPhones over free nationwide WiFi...
>
> You mean you're not doing that already?

Only when convenient- my Windows Mobile phone, (an unlocked AT&T Tilt) can
do Skype and SIP VoIP (I use a Voicestick account for SIP.) I've
configured my T-Mobile service to forward to my VoIP account when
unavailable, which gives me Visual Voicemail (unanswered GSM calls roll to
my VoIP provider who then instantly e-mails the .wav file to my push
account.) The added benefit of this is if I'm somewhere where I have WiFi
but lousy or no cell service (my hotel room in Bellevue, NE last month, for
example) I leave the phone's WiFi on and VoIP client running and the
incoming T-Mo calls I would've missed seamlessly ring in on the VoIP line,
and I can answer them. Sort of my "roll-your-own" T-Mo Hotspot@Home service.

Compared to my old 200MHz OMAP HTC Wizard, which didn't have the horsepower
to do VoIP well without potentially dangerous overclocking, the 400MHz Tilt
hums along fine with VoIP.

On 2008-07-23, Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote:
> Agreed again. But realistically it's a non-issue- the landline companies
> have already diversified into internet, VoIP and cellular. Verizon isn't
> really going to cry a river when a $30 landline customer dumps it for a $50
> Verizon wireless cellular plan!

Verizon might not cry a river, but I'll bet they'd shed a few
tears. 100% of a $30 landline is better than 55% of a $50 cell
plan.

Dennis Ferguson