Roughly two years after its commercial launch, AT&T Inc.’s (ATT) U-verse bundle posted its largest-ever net subscriber gain, with 170,000 customer adds.
That blew away the previous strongest quarter, the first quarter of this year, when AT&T added 148,000.
The company said on Wednesday the total U-verse customer base has spread from 379,000 at the end of the first quarter, to 549,000 at the end of the second quarter. The telco also said it’s on schedule to hit its 1 million customer target by year’s end.
“Our U-verse service continues to ramp nicely,” said AT&T CFO Rick Lindner in the AT&T’s earnings call Wednesday morning. Lindner said installation times have dropped “nearly 15 percent since the fourth quarter” with the service driving residential ARPU up 4.2 percent. .
“Churn is low and customer satisfaction is high,” said Lindner. He attributed much of that to the addition of voice to U-verse in January, bulking it up from a double-play product to one that has helped address access line loss.
AT&T previously had separated customer base and net additions numbers on its Web site, but didn’t in the call, calling the 170,000 number a “net subscriber gain.” That’s according to an AT&T spokesperson when asked to clarify the figure.
In general, Lindner said the company “posted double-digit growth across IP services in the business and consumer segments.” The company’s earnings were driven primarily by growth in wireless services, AT&T reported.
AT&T has trimmed capex spending and continues to do so, Lindner said. The amount is “in the hundreds of million of dollars, not in billions,” he said. Asked about capex spending for the second half of 2008, the CFO said “it will be similar but slightly lower” than first half levels.
Meanwhile, AT&T continues to expand U-verse availability. For instance, the carrier announced Monday that U-verse had arrived in southern Florida, with plans to expand availability of the bundle in the months ahead. Lindner said U-verse now is available in 53 markets and passes more than 11 million living units.
The telco recently confirmed it has started to address a service weakness – inability to support two concurrent HD streams to the home with U-verse – with plans to complete the effort in the third quarter.
AT&T still intends to offer whole-home DVR services by the end of the year. Linder said it’s now in trials.
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