Verizon takes another swing at AT&T, puts iPhone on the Island of Misfit Toys

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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AT&T also says its network reaches about the same number of people as Verizon's, so we're thinking it's a little miffed that it's being portrayed as an also-ran here. We'll update as we learn more, keep it locked!In essence, we believe the ads mislead consumers into believing that AT&T doesn't offer ANY wireless service in the vast majority of the country. In fact, AT&T's wireless network blankets the US, reaching approximately 296M people. Additionally, our 3G service is available in over 9,600 cities and towns. Verizon's misleading advertising tactics appear to be a response to AT&T's strong leadership in smartphones. We have twice the number of smartphone customers... and we've beaten them two quarters in a row on net post-paid subscribers. We also had lower churn -- a sign that customers are quite happy with the service they receive.
The crux of AT&T's recent complaint to the FCC regarding Google Voice was that Google -- not being subject to the common carrier rules that help facilitate fair, open telephone networks -- was blocking customers from accessing numbers managed by rural carriers that charged higher connection fees, thereby giving it a leg up on its Old Guard competition by saving cash in ways AT&T and others are legally barred from doing. Google's hitting back today, not by agreeing to submit to common carrier rules (come on now, don't be ridiculous) but by saying in a statement to the FCC that it's now blocking calls to "fewer than 100" numbers in total now that it has finished implementing new back-end capabilities that allow it to single out specific numbers rather than entire exchanges. Google complains that calls to the top ten exchanges accounted for 26 percent of its entire connection fee outlay -- but yeah, that's pretty much what telcos have been dealing with since time immemorial, so the bellyaching's likely to fall on a lot of deaf ears. For what it's worth, the company is still asking the FCC to make sweeping changes to connection fee policy, but whether this ends up getting them out of AT&T's more immediate concerns remains to be seen.
Well, it's not much, but AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega doesn't exactly have to go too far out on a limb to attract attention when he's talking about something as big as an end to iPhone exclusivity. His latest, and seemingly most extensive ruminations on the matter came during a conference call with analysts this week, where he reportedly said that AT&T has a "legacy of having a great portfolio...that will continue after the iPhone is no longer exclusive to us," and that he thinks AT&T's ability to drive results "will continue after the iPhone." He did seem to dial things back a bit later in the call, however, switching to langauge like "even if we lose exclusivity" instead of "after the iPhone," and going on to extol the virtues of the iPhone, noting that "others will try to emulate them [Apple], but that device by far is the best in terms of ease of use."
AT&T has come clean with its third quarter earnings today, and on paper, it seems like big ol' Number Two doesn't have much to complain about as far as cash flow goes. EPS comes in at 54 cents, 4 cents more per share than the consensus estimate; revenue was up from the prior quarter (though down a bit from the same quarter a year ago) and they clocked in 2 million net adds, 1.4 million of which were postpaid. That now leaves AT&T with a staggering 81.6 million subs, 6.7 million more than a year ago. Meanwhile, 4.3 million new phones were activated on the network -- 3.2 million of which were iPhones, AT&T's best quarter ever for iPhone activations -- which might actually be perceived as a bad sign for the company seeing how it stresses how heavily reliant it is on Apple's baby for customer conquests. Data continues to be a heavy focus with data-focused revenue up 33.6 percent from the same period last year, and for everyone's sake, we hope that every cent of that revenue is going right back into the network.








