AT&T Inc. banked on strong business from broadband and its stake in Cingular Wireless, posting increased earnings per share and revenue, despite a drop in overall voice-access lines.
The earnings report also was notable for what was missing: an update on AT&T’s Project Lightspeed fiber-to-the-node buildout or the U-verse TV service, now in a market trial in San Antonio. An AT&T spokesman’s explanation was the company gave a detailed overview at a Jan. 31 investor’s conference.
On the wireline side, AT&T’s broadband digital subscriber line service continued to boom: It added 511,000 new customers for a total of more than 7.4 million. But AT&T did see a drop in residential voice, losing 267,000 regional retail consumer lines. That contributed to a wireline revenue drop to $14.7 billion in the first quarter from $15.6 billion a year ago.
Rick Lindner, AT&T’s senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, noted during the conference call that it did expect line losses this quarter “due to fairly full cable entry in our territories — primarily that was from Time Warner [Cable] and Comcast [Corp.].”
One of the few mentions of the much anticipated Project Lightspeed fiber-based network came when Lindner was asked about efforts to lock in U-verse programming deals.
“We have a number of content deals done,” Lindner said. “We don’t see any issues with respect to either our current controlled launch or our commercial launch later this quarter.”
