AT&T’s Q2: Hello, new smartphone subscribers; Goodbye, Cricket prepaid customers

AT&T’s second-quarter earnings report was a tale of two carriers. On the one hand, AT&T had a record spring quarter when it came to its core postpaid business, adding 1 million net new customers. But in its prepaid business, AT&T lost 405,000 subscribers, all casualties of AT&T’s acquisition of Leap Wireless.

From Ma Bell’s perspective it’s all good news, since postpaid customers buying premium data plans are far more profitable than pay-as-you-go subscribers. However, no former Cricket customers upgraded to AT&T postpaid plans, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega pointed out, meaning AT&T reached 700,000 smartphone net adds entirely by luring them away from other carriers. So we’re basically seeing flight in two different directions: postpaid customers arriving and prepaid customers leaving.