Submitted by Fox First at Ten on October 24th
By The Associated Press
Telecommunications companies have begun releasing their earnings reports for the latest quarter. Here is a summary of reports for selected telecommunications companies and what they reveal about their own and the industry's prospects.
- Oct. 18: Verizon Communications Inc.'s wireless division added a net 1.5 million devices to contract-based plans in the third quarter, more than it has in many years. Analysts were expecting it to add about 900,000. Including non-contract devices, overall additions were the strongest in four years. Verizon Wireless got a boost from its new Share Everything plan, which made it cheaper for households to add wireless service to tablets and laptops.
The launch of the iPhone 5 at the end of the quarter also helped Verizon's numbers. It activated 650,000 units of the new model in just over a week. It activated 3.1 million iPhones of all kinds in the quarter, accounting for 46 percent of its total smartphone activations.
- Wednesday: AT&T Inc. says it added a net 151,000 new customers on contract-based plans from July through September, the lowest number for that period since at least 2003. AT&T blamed short supplies of the iPhone 5, which launched a week before the end of the quarter. AT&T said the shortage of iPhones meant that most of them went to people who were already AT&T customers. But that didn't hold back Verizon Wireless, which reported adding 10 times as many contract-signing customers as AT&T did.
Coming up:
- Thursday: Sprint Nextel Corp.
- Oct. 30: MetroPCS Communications Inc.
- Nov. 7: Leap Wireless International Inc.
- Nov. 8: T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG; Windstream Corp.
Note: T-Mobile and MetroPCS have reached a deal to combine their cellphone businesses, but they will report separately until the deal is completed.
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