Notwithstanding the massive subscriber growth experienced by its chief rival U.S. telecoms last year, AT&T finished the year strong and posted a profit of $6.9 billion on $33.6 billion in revenue for the fourth and final quarter of 2013.
AT&T reported a gain of 809,000 net wireless subscribers for the three-month period ending December 31st.
566,000 of these new subscribers were on more lucrative post-paid contracts. More than half of all post-paid net adds were smartphones.
“2013 was the year of the network,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “With Project VIP, we’re delivering faster speeds and new services to millions more customers. And growth on these platforms is going strong. We exceeded build targets across the board. Our 4G LTE network is nearly complete and is the nation’s most reliable with lightning-fast speeds. U-verse is rapidly expanding, and our fiber-to-the-business build is off to a fast start.”
So where does AT&T go from here in the New Year?
“The next steps are to make our networks even more powerful and layer on services that will drive new growth in the years ahead,” Stephenson adds. “We have good momentum in areas like connected car, home automation and mobile business solutions. We’re also committed to transforming our operations to make them more responsive and efficient. To that end, we’ve launched Project Agile, a broad set of initiatives to streamline and improve every part of our business. Execution has begun and will be a focus area for us in 2014 and beyond.”
