Cingular Churns Out Profit in Q1

Light Reading reports on Cingular Wireless' "profitable first quarter, with a 9.1 percent increase in revenue, thanks to low churn, more data service usage, and some opinionated American Idol voters."

According to the article, Cingular "had 55.8 million subscribers as of March 31, and 1.7 net customer additions for the quarter. Monthly customer churn was 1.9 percent that's down from a churn of 2.2 percent a year ago."

Overall ARPU was down, too, to $48.48, compared with $49.60 a year ago. However, "monthly ARPU just from data services was $5.22, up some 41 percent in the first quarter last year. Data transfers accounted for 10.9 percent of monthly revenue, as opposed to 7.7 percent for the same period last year. Customers sent 6.75 billion text messages in the first quarter, a big chunk of which were related to the nation's obsession with the fifth season of American Idol. Last year, customers sent 41.5 million text messages to vote for their favorite Idols, and Cingular officials expect to top that this year."

Cingular also planes to "upgrade all its major markets to 3G HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) network by the end of the year" and "launch multiple handsets in the next quarter that support both cellular and WiFi connections."

Philip Redman at Gartner said, "Cingular will turn down its TDMA (time division multiple access) network and analog in 2008. It still has to integrate 60 percent of the AT&T networks and convert all the backend systems -- billing and customer service -- to one system. Cingular is taking on one of the biggest network integration programs ever and while last year, and most of this year has been challenging, 2007 will be when it can finally move forward with a single system."