AT&T: 13M Subscribers on Shared Data Plans; Demand for Bigger Buckets

A recent report claimed that "Data Caps Raise ISPs Profit Margins" (here). AT&T recent Q2 results confirms that, showing transition to shared data plans, growth in total wireless data revenues (19.8%) and ARPU (17.6%) as well as demand for bigger plans.

 Ralph de la Vega [pictured], President and Chief Executive Officer - AT&T Mobility, said "Overall more than 70% of our smartphone base has moved to usage-based plans and data use on the smartphones is growing by about 50% year-over-year, so we have more smartphones on usage-based plans, data growth is strong and growing number of subscribers are taking bigger buckets of data from us. About 80% already take the larger data plans and we are seeing more than a quarter of mobile share accounts on data plans of 10 gigabytes or higher".

"In terms of wireless data and people hitting the caps or bumping against them. We are not seeing a lot of that. What we are seeing, which is part of our strategy all along, Tim, is we know that there is an explosion going on with tablets. Our firm believe, all the time, was we needed to get mobile share out in the market place, so customers could easily add a tablet and at the time they add the tablet, then the increase to size of the data bucket. That's exactly what is happening".

  

"We already have more than 35% of our smartphone subscribers on LTE".

  

See "AT&T Inc. (T) Management Discusses Q2 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha - here.