Verizon Wireless Has A Killer Quarter
Results from wireless carriers have been good this quarter. For example, Cingular posted 1.4M net adds. So many forecasters were expecting VZW to have similar numbers. But despite this optimism, Verizon still managed to blow everyone away with a surprising 1.64M net adds in the first quarter. Now, that’s ‘net’ adds, so it subtracts the customers that have left, but Verizon also reduced churn from from 1.6 to 1.3% (churn is always stated as the % of subs that leave each month). A churn stat of 1.3% is a very good result given that the industry average hovered around 2% for most of the past 5 years. It’s also interesting to have lowered churn in an era of WLNP. ARPU is also up 2% to $49, while data revenues contributed $3 in ARPU, and $416M in revenue for the quarter. (Data ARPUs are $4 at Cingular and $6 at SPCS.)
