AT&T's U-Verse Universe Expands to 10.7M Subscribers

AT&T added 194,000 U-verse TV subscribers in the fourth quarter and 924,000 for all of 2013, extending its TV total to 5.5 million.

“Some companies are excited about actually gaining customers; we added almost 200,000 subscribers in the quarter and nearly 1 million for the year, plus we had our lowest TV churn ever in the fourth quarter,” AT&T CFO John Stephens said. AT&T also added 630,000 U-verse broadband subscribers in the period, giving it a record of 2.7 million adds for the year, and broadening its grand total in the category of 10.4 million. With traditional DSL losses factored in, AT&T lost 2,000 net broadband subscribers in the fourth quarter, but managed to gain 35,000 broadband subs for the full year, ending 2013 with 16.42 million. At the end of 2013, 63% of all AT&T wireline broadband subs were on U-verse, versus 47% in the year-ago quarter. About 59% of all U-verse broadband subs were taking a tier of at least 12 Mbps (downstream). “We believe we have [reached] a tipping point with U-verse broadband with the growing base of U-verse subscribers we feel confident that we can grow broadband subscribers even stronger this coming year,” Stephens said. AT&T ended 2013 with 10.7 million total U-verse subscribers (TV and broadband).

Stephenson said a court’s recent decision to vacate much of the FCC's Open Internet Order “really changed nothing” in terms of how the telecommunications company will conduct broadband operations.