AT&T Doubles U-verse Base, Posts Largest TV Quarter

AT&T Inc. (T) today announced its biggest ever U-verse TV quarter, more than doubling its customer base from 379,000 at the end of the first quarter to 781,000 as of the end of the third quarter. The telco also posted its highest ever quarter for net additions with 232,000 new subscribers.

AT&T says its U-verse TV customer base stands at 781,000 at the end of the third quarter and now claims it’s on pace to exceed its year-end goal of 1 million users.

As part of its earnings announcement, the operator said its U-verse network deployment now passes 14 million living units and that its Total Home DVR deployment should be completed by yearend. AT&T says it has completed rolling out support of two simultaneous HD streams per U-verse household.

The telco said its average revenue per user climbed 4.3 percent during the third quarter, which it claims is “continuing the trend of recent quarters.” AT&T claims that more than 85 percent of its U-verse TV customers are also signing up for its high-speed Internet service, thus boosting its broadband access business.

Consumer IP data revenues, which include broadband and U-verse services, grew 19 percent, and business IP data revenues were up 14.7 percent. AT&T says IP data now accounts for 44 percent of its total wireline data revenues.

The U-verse TV customer base has grown from 126,000 in Q3 2007 to 231,000 the next quarter and 379,000 for the first quarter of this year. That number moved to 549,000 in the second quarter of 2008 and to 781,000 at the end of Q3, according to AT&T. Net U-verse TV adds reached a new high of 232,000 in the third quarter, up from the previous high of 170,000 for the second quarter of 2008, according to the telco.

U-verse is also helping AT&T on the voice front.

“U-verse has demonstrated it’s having pull through with voice,” said AT&T CFO Rick Lindner. “It’s improving access line retention.”

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