AT&T Wireless losing 150,000 subscribers/quarter

According to an article published by the AP:

March 31, 2004, 6:14 PM EST


NEW YORK -- Long dogged by service complaints, AT&T Wireless may be losing as many as 150,000 more subscribers a month now that cell phone users are free to change service providers without losing their phone numbers. An outsized portion of those customers appear to be going to arch-rival Verizon Wireless.

The mounting defections from the company, which is being acquired for $41 billion by Cingular Wireless, are expected to leave AT&T Wireless with its first quarterly decline in subscribers, industry analysts at Bear Stearns and Smith Barney estimate.

Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, is boasting that it has won 10 subscribers from AT&T Wireless for every customer it has lost to that company in the four months since the "keep-your-phone-number" rules took effect in late November.

And in the key battleground of New York City and its suburbs, Verizon Wireless told The Associated Press it has been winning subscribers away from AT&T Wireless at a 20-to-1 clip, with an overall gain of nearly 65,000 customers from AT&T Wireless in that market.

AT&T Wireless declined to comment Wednesday on the figures from analysts or its rivals, many of whom have been targeting AT&T Wireless customers in hopes the company is distracted by its merger plans.

The figures suggest that a good many AT&T Wireless customers, including the industry's largest base of high-paying business users, may have been dissatisfied with their cell phone service for some time, but stayed because they didn't want to lose their phone numbers.

But there's no sign yet that Cingular, a joint venture between SBC Communications and BellSouth, is having second thoughts about the hefty price tag it agreed to pay for AT&T Wireless in February.

"Cingular knew how bad January was (for AT&T Wireless) before they signed the deal," said Phil Cusick, an industry analyst for Bear Stearns who now estimates that AT&T Wireless will show a net loss of 200,000 customers for the quarter. "They'd have to lose about 5 million customers before they impair the value of this business by 10 percent. I think that's really unlikely," he said, referring to a reported escape clause in the deal.

In the third quarter of 2003, AT&T Wireless was losing an average of nearly 600,000 customers per month, but was signing up enough new subscribers to show a net gain of 229,000 for the period. That "churn" rate grew to more than 700,000 per month in the fourth quarter as the new phone number rules went into effect, but AT&T Wireless still showed an overall gain of 128,000 customers.

Analysts are now estimating, however, that customer losses at AT&T Wireless may average more than 750,000 a month for the first quarter, far surpassing the number of new subscribers.

In a bid to stem its customer losses, AT&T Wireless has been upgrading portions of its network to improve call quality and offering free phone upgrades to some subscribers to enable them to take advantage of the improvement.

With that work completed in nine key markets, including New York City, the company has gone on the offensive, with full-page ads in major newspapers such as The New York Times, declaring itself superior to Verizon Wireless in call quality -- a central theme of Verizon Wireless' marketing efforts.

Those claims -- based on so-called "drive tests" where wireless calls are made from a battery of cell phones in a moving car -- were likely a strong motivation behind Verizon Wireless' decision to disclose its tally of customers won from AT&T Wireless.

"According to our drive testing, our records indicate we had the best results, and AT&T Wireless' results were not second best," said Howard Waterman, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone PLC of Britain. Verizon may even take AT&T Wireless to court over the claims, Waterman said.

While Cingular's purchase of AT&T Wireless is expected to put the merged company ahead of Verizon in market share -- combined, they had 46 million customers at the end of 2003 -- Verizon's momentum may close that gap considerably by the time the merger is completed, expected later this year.

Verizon's cellular subscriber base ballooned by more than 5 million customers in 2003 for a market-leading, year-end total of 37.5 million.

Cingular has been adding more than half a million customers a quarter for the past three quarters, one of the strongest growth rates in the industry -- but not enough to keep pace with Verizon, particularly if AT&T Wireless continues to stumble.

Then again, Verizon's recent success may help explain anecdotal reports that its vaunted wireless network may be getting congested.

"Maybe that's why we're hearing a pickup in complaints" about the number of dropped and blocked calls for Verizon's customers in the New York area, Cusick said.