AT&T expects to post more than 2M net additions, nearly matching T-Mobile US forecast
AT&T told the investment community this week that it expects to post more than 2 million net additions to its AT&T Mobility operations, which would match similar robust numbers posted by the carrier the previous quarter.
Ahead of an analyst event, AT&T’s management said the carrier is set to post positive net additions across AT&T Mobility’s postpaid, prepaid, connected devices and reseller operations. The company also said it expects to post improved margins for wireless service earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
AT&T last quarter reported 2.1 million net additions to its mobile unit, which was three times what it posted the previous year. However, two-thirds of that growth is from connected devices, which include telematics and machine-to-machine products. Those devices typically draw smaller monthly revenue compared to traditional postpaid and prepaid phone connections, though are seen as the industry’s connection drivers moving forward.
More troubling last quarter was the 60% year-over-year drop in postpaid net additions, which included a loss of 249,000 postpaid phone connections.
AT&T’s biggest challenge could again come from T-Mobile US, which recently reported it will post at least 2.1 million net customer additions for the third quarter. T-Mobile US said that growth would include at least 760,000 postpaid phone net additions and around 1 million total phone net additions.
T-Mobile US’ management, when announcing Q2 results, did note a slight slowing in porting trends from its rivals through the first month of Q3 compared with Q2, dropping from 1.5-to-1 to 1.2-to-1 with Verizon Wireless, from 1.9-to-1 to 1.8-to-1 with AT&T Mobility and from 2.5-to-1 to 2-to-1 with Sprint.
AT&T’s management also said the company is looking forward to the upcoming 600 megahertz spectrum auction despite just spending $18 billion on spectrum during the record-setting AWS-3 auction. AT&T previously committed to spending at least $9 billion in the auction as part of it garnering approval of its recent $48.5 billion acquisition of DirecTV.
Sprint last weekend said it will not participate in the auction, which is currently scheduled to start on March 29, citing its already robust spectrum position in support of its own network plans. Sprint’s current spectrum position includes an average of around 34 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band, 14 megahertz in the 800 MHz band and upwards of 150 megahertz of spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band.
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