Verizon growth trails AT&T in spring
updated 08:50 am EDT, Fri July 24, 2009
Verizon Adds 1 1m in Q2
Verizon this morning hoped to upend AT&T's positive results by touting its subscriber additions ahead of its actual quarterly update. The company says it added 1.1 million new customers in spring and now has a total of 87.7 million subscribers, or 8.1 million more than AT&T has after its own spring quarter. About 85.2 million of Verizon's customers were retail customers.
The carrier also trumpeted that it has the "highest loyalty" based on a low turnover of customers but declined to provide a figure ahead of next week's results.
Either claim is partly undermined by AT&T's own statistics. It grew slightly faster than Verizon with 1.2 million new users and achieved its own record low churn of 1.09 percent, hinting that few of its customers are leaving to join Verizon or other providers. A large portion of the results have been attributed to the iPhone 3GS launch in June and its subsequent attraction of customers as well as retaining existing users.
