AT&T Finds VoIP Stabilizes Landline Voice Losses

One of the so-far-unanswered questions in the wired telecom business is when incumbent telephone companies will stop losing wireline voice customers. To be sure, a significant portion of overall voice consumption has shifted, and will continue to shift, to wireless.

 

And some might speculate that wireline voice revenues will dwindle inevitably to zero. Others might point out that what is happening is deliberate tolerance of some amount of voice attrition by incumbent providers who do not wish to cannibalize their still-sizable landline voice revenues with lower-revenue VoIP.

 

But that will change at some point. Perhaps that point has not yet been reached at firms such as AT&T, Verizon (News - Alert), or virtually all other smaller and independent telcos. But AT&T is getting closer.

 

"As we are adding U-verse customers, two thirds of those customers are taking the U-verse voice-over-IP product," says AT&T (News - Alert) CFO Richard Lindner. "We call it a U-verse voice or a VoIP product but from a consumer standpoint, what they are buying is they are buying a wireline voice product and so that’s been positive."

 

"And then when you look at the basic access line trends in consumer, we’ve actually seen the access line loss there flatten out somewhat, and so that’s where the VoIP product and solid broadband and video are starting to help those revenue connection trends," Lindner said.