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Analyst: AT&T needs to blow about $5 billion on their wireless network to make it not suck

Categories: AT&T, Infrastructure
By: , IntoMobile
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 10:36 AM

“Spend or suffer” is what AT&T needs to do in order to survive the the damage that Apple has done to their network says Gerard Hallaren, Director of Research at TownHall Investment. He estimates that the company needs to spend around $5 billion on their wireless network to catch up to where Verizon is today. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering AT&T spent $21.6 billion on their network between 2006 and September 2009. That’s $480 million per month over 45 months. It pales in comparison to the $25.4 billion Verizon spent during the same span of time, but it’s better than Sprint’s $16 billion. One of AT&T’s problems is that 57% of their operating income comes from the wireless side of the company, while 35% is from the wired unit, yet AT&T only spends 34% of their expenditures on the wireless side and 65% on the wired unit.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientest to figure out that AT&T is pouring more money into a part of the company that makes them less money, and that the CFO should pull a Billy Madison and repeat grades K-12 in the short span of just 24 weeks.

[Via: IT World]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.