AT&T's IPTV take up 240,000 subs

AT&T said in its third quarter earnings report this week that it had added 240,000 U-verse TV subscribers during the quarter, a figure which was lower than the two previous quarters. In the second quarter this year, AT&T added 248,000 TV subscribers, and in the first quarter brought in 284,000. Still the Q3 2009 addition were high by about 8,000 than the IPTV customer additions the company reported for the same quarter a year ago. Perhaps, the delayed effects of the recession finally took a bit of a toll on this previously recession-proof segment.

AT&T also lost satellite TV subscribers for the second straight quarter--about 15,000 this time--as AT&T continues to adjust to like with relative new exclusive satellite partner DirecTV. The dip follows comments a DirecTV executive made in September that suggested satelite TV growth via telco resale could be slowing down.

However, AT&T officials were mostly upbeat about the progress of U-verse TV, saying it could bring in about $2 billion in revenue for this full year. U.S. telcos usually get billed as the infants in the IPTV world, but that revenue expectation suggests maturity.

AT&T now has about 1.8 million IPTV customers, and around 4 million total TV subscribers when you include satellite resale subs.

For more:
Multichannel News has this story [1]

Related articles
AT&T added 248,000 TV subs in Q2 [2]
AT&T added 284,000 TV subs in Q1 [3]
DirecTV recently noticed a slowdown [4]