property33 said:
He and Austin316 opened a bait shop in Cancun.

Pistol Petes Cell Phones and Fish Hooks™.

Bwahahahahahah! 🤣

Yeah, I've been wondering where he was too.

jinx7676 said:
a profitable company means better things to come for the customer. they can afford more network upgrades...

Ah yes...they can afford to, but will they? I hope they do as I will be a new Cingular customer in 3 weeks. 🙂

It's more likely going to end up as salary compensation packages for the head honchos as usual.

They will. I know the projected budget for the year in markets I will be opening stores. Because of this growth they can project agressive tower expansion and accelerated UMTS growth.

Yes, head honchos will get money too, but they have helped guide the company to profitability and it trickles down. More money was paid to agents to help drive that growth which resulted in additional job creation and increased income for my employees. I was able to afford a 10% increase in staff for my current and future stores based on the revenue we have earned and expect to earn because of this growth and profitability.

Well said...
Although not an owner like Tex, I too added full time headcount. Our market also opened new locations that created jobs in their communities.

if true you break them down to show what you mean!

Is it like two million go phones 😁

Well if that is true then I would say yes they are impressive but worthless numbers. But I doubt that is the case!

i will post later the breakdown. over 50 percent was wholesale prepaid ADDS which means PADDED GROSS basically. a company working under att could but a plot of prepaid nums like a reseller. not activated. and count it towards gross without any lines actually being activated. i will post specifics when i get home. you will find it interesting. and wait tll monday. got a sneak peak of vzw nums. you will love it! 🤣

sorry i wrte but i meant BUY. its dangerous to type and drive

Actually, 1.6 million of those subscribers were postpaid. That does not "break down" to over 50 percent.

Fifty percent of 2.4 million is 1.2 million, bud.

He may have a point.

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/techtel ... »

Would the difference be from resellers?

well the person who told me maybe used the wrong wording. but thats PRETTY DAMN CLOSE TO BEING JUST AS BAD!!!! 🤣 if you can post the total breakdown go ahead. shed light on the totals for us instead of getting some folks into a flame war.

djatvzw said:
well the person who told me maybe used the wrong wording. but thats PRETTY DAMN CLOSE TO BEING JUST AS BAD!!!! 🤣 if you can post the total breakdown go ahead. shed light on the totals for us instead of getting some folks into a flame war.

if the company gave me permission to post what info i have, then i would, but since it's internal i can't say more than what is available on the internet.

But buried in that figure is Cingular's soft postpaid subscriber growth. The Atlanta-based company added about 861,000 users in the quarter, which is down sequentially for the second quarter in a row. In the third quarter, Cingular had 928,000 net new postpaid subscribers. Analysts had been looking for postpaid subscriber additions to be above 900,000.

So the pre paid is over 50% of that number?

I think what the article was saying is 861k post-paid, some other number pre-paid (in the article, but I'm too lazy to check, about the same # as the post-paid), and then another amount that makes up the remainder of the 2.4 million, so say another 700k or so. I think that last number is from resellers but I'm not sure. The total number quoted by AT&T (2.4 mil) is about three times the number of post-paid net subs added. If that's correct, then they're in the same boat as Sprextel. Lots of net subs added, but not the best population of net subs added.

OK, they're not bleeding customers like Sprextel. And 2.4 mil is nothing to sneeze at. VZ could get a ton of net adds and still look like the kind who got second place in the spelling bee.

Wait until Monday.

exactly. thank you. they are where they belong. at the bottom with sprint. 🤣

OK, from RCRNews, http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20070124/FREE/70124001/1002

And, since RCR won't be available for free tomorrow, the breakdown is:

746,000 Cingular Pre-paid
750,000 Resellers
861,000 Cingular Post-Paid

That doesn't quite reach 2.4000 million net adds, but close enough.

I'll leave that to you since you were the one that decided to bring it up (without checking facts).

A flame war won't be on me. 😉

the facts are above. just want the truth about the numbers posted thats all. not a bad quarter for att but far from what they wanted and nothing to go get all excited about like the original poster with the suck on that or whatever was said 😉

The fact that Cingular is aggressively targeting the prepaid market indicates that massive growth in net gophone sub adds is EXACTLY what the company wanted. Unlike InPulse, Verizon's anemic, pathetic and utterly craptastic prepaid offering, GoPhone is actually a profitable and viable proposal for Cingular and an excellent product for consumers. It is naive and incredibly shortsighted to brag about the fact that 2.4 million people made a conscious effort to NOT sign with your company as a sign that the quarter was weak. Verizon has never had 2.4 million net adds, Cingular consistently outperforms Verizon in gross adds, is doing a much better job at keeping those customers, is making more money than ever before, data ARPU is growing ... the c...
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wolfspider73 said:

...but to say that Cingular is comparable to a Sprextel, which has struggled to net 1 million sub adds in the last half of 2006, compared to almost 4 million for Cingular...
Oh, and last time I checked, Verizon is a solid second behind Cingular, a position it has held for over 2 years now, in spite of record growth. Nice try though.

Actually
"Gross additions for the fourth quarter were a record-tying 5.5 million, which compares to 5.1 million in the year-ago quarter and to 4.6 million in the third quarter of 2006"

Anxiovert said:

wolfspider73 said:

...but to say that Cingular is comparable to a Sprextel, which has struggled to net 1 million sub adds in the last half of 2006, compared to almost 4 million for Cingular...
Oh, and last time I checked, Verizon is a solid second behind Cingular, a position it has held for over 2 years now, in spite of record growth. Nice try though.

Actually
"Gross additions for the fourth quarter were a record-tying 5.5 million, which compares to 5.1 million in the year-ago quarter and to 4.6 million in the third quarter of 2006"

I believe he's referencing total net adds for Q3 and Q4 not gross adds, Anx. i.e. 1.4 million net adds in Q3 and 2.4 mill...
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Cingy had a great 4th quarter, no lie. But similar to Sprextel, the overall profitability of that 2.4 mil is not the same as 2.4 mil post paid. That is where the similarity ends. Sprextel has had infinitely more difficulty bringing together their two networks than Cingy/AT&T.

Side note -- Two years ago, everyone was all over post paid and the quarterly numbers were from almost all post paid customers. Those days are gone. I think VZ is the only one of the big three that will post quarter of almost all post paid.

Didn't VZ claim to have the most post paid customers a while back?

What are the VZW numbers???? If you know then spill the beans and save us the wait, but then again you might be talking smack.

wombough said:
if true you break them down to show what you mean!

do show.

1.6 mil were postpaid

3.6 of 5.5 mil gross were postpaid.

this is fact.

lol.. do you think they just "flipped a switch" to merge ATTWS/Cingular? Mergers of two companies that size are a HUGE pain in the a$$ and just a gigantic heaadache..regardless of the technology similarities.


My question is about the sprint/Nextel networks.. are they running simultaneously? iDen for PTT and cdma for voice/data? I mean they still offer PTT so I wonder what they actually did over and above what ATT/Cingular did..

Think about this.

Despite Cingular and AT&T Wireless being the same technology, they had eleven separate networks to integrate and maintain. 1 AMPS, 2 TDMA, 2 GSM, 2 GPRS/EDGE, 2 UMTS/HSDPA, 2 E911. They also had to quickly decommission and relocate thousands of overlapping towers throughout the nation. With two companies of Cingular's and AT&T Wireless' size, that's a really complicated thing to do in just a few months.

On the other hand, Sprint purchased a company running a different technology. The result? Little integration. They're still running as separate networks. Eventually that will have to change as Sprint migrates to newer technologies, but the process will me much more gradual. Cingular's was not.

The magnitude of the m...
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Sprint could definately take a page out of Cingulars book 😳

I don't think that Verizon cares about prepaid or resellers, seems that they are more interested in contract/postpaid customers looking at the fact that they are adding 1.5-1.9 million postpaid a quarter and next to none in the reseller and prepaid area.

Yeah, and just think of how many more customers they could be reeling in the dough from if they actually concentrated on having a viable prepaid option.

Just because you're good at one thing, doesn't mean you shouldn't strive to be good at another.

Prepaid is money. Businesses should want more money.

I can't remember the last time that I saw a VZW prepay commercial, around the holidays there was a lot of Cinguar commercials with the Christmas Story theme but nothing from VZW. I wonder why VZW isn't targeting the prepay cusotmers, the last time I was in a store I don't even remember seeing any prepay info.
What does the average prepay customer bring in to Cingular every month, anyone have a figure?

Around $60+ (on the pick your plan pre-paid plans). The pay as you go are not as profitable cuz these are the ones that the very low users choose

ya know, low churn high ARPU, lots of data... CHA-CHING!! wow watch that AT&T stock soar!!

Hmmm, wireless profit nearly quadrupled and Merrill Lynch upgraded AT&T shares to buy status from neutral this morning thanks to Cingular's turnout.

Looks like Cingular is really hurting. 🙄

I agree that 2.4 million was great however I would have been more impressed if the pospaid adds were a little higher. There is more stability in postpaid I would think than reseller and prepaid. 900k or so postpaid is still better than anyone else has posted for the fourth quarter and 2.4 million could be hard to beat for overall net adds. Where was Sprint for the quarter, hahahaha.

Until verizon shows their hand next week 😁

I just went back to Cingular too. I love them!

Still well above Sprint, hahahahaha.

Yeah, those 750,000 people who bought Cingular handsets without costly subsidies, who pay more per minute for service than post paid customers, whose calls into customer care tend to be shorter and more straightforward, who in spite of all those carrier defecting contractless heathens have not resulted in a significant upswing in churn ... yeah, what a fool's errand. You guys are like Sean Hannity, all hyperbole, no substance or rational thought.

Hmmm, funny. I could swear that I heard something along the lines that VZW is the most profitable wireless company, that must be hard with all of those postpaid cusomters draining them huh???

750,000 of those adds were NOT because customers wanted Cingular, that is the point. Those 750,000 are not loyal to the money invested by Cingular into it's network and employees, these people would rather use a reseller than purchase from Cingular and are likely making Cingular a lot less money than they would if they were Cingular customers.
1/3 of the net adds to not show loyalty to Cingular, if you are a Cingular employee wouldn't you rather see the cingular logo on those 750,000 people instead of Trac Phone or whoever else they brought their loyalty to?
Cingular is sliding in Postpaid numbers, if I were Stan Sigman I would be alarmed and working hard to get the postpaid adds up, think how many more customers could have been added if...
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Up until this point I really wasn't sure...but now I know you are talking out of your ass.

Why can't people like you never accept that Cingular had a good quarter? By no means is adding 2.4 million new customers (that all hit your network with revenue and even profit) a "poor" thing.

Cingular is in no danger of "turning into another Sprint," having to rely on resellers or prepaid, or even losing the number one spot to Verizon.

Just face it, if Cingular could add so many more customers with postpaid...Verizon could definitely work on prepaid.

Did you know that the average GoPhone Pick-Your-Plan user has a higher ARPU than customers under contract? And they're using the network a lot less. That makes them some of the most profitabl...
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The reseller accounts don't bring in as much revenue, but that money is pure profit. The prepaid customers are major revenue streams, and more loyal than most other prepaid offerings because gophone is an actual honest to goodness viable alternative to those who don't want to be tied to a contract but want almost all the benefits of being on a contracted post paid plan. It's prepaid done right. And your argument about how unprofitable these customers are is COMPLETELY undercut by the fact that Cingular just hauled in $782 million. Profits are increasing. Yes, of course Cingular would love to have more post paid customers, who wouldn't. But fact is, one of Cingular's many competitve advantages over Verizon is it's prepaid offerings, and we ma...
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