Verizon released its quarterly and yearly earnings for 2012, and it was another strong performance for the wireless division. In the quarter, Verizon Wireless added 2.2 million retail net customers, of which 2.1M were lucrative retail postpaid connections. The carrier now boasts of 98.2 million total retail connections, the bulk of which (92.5M) are postpaid.
Customers on average now have 2.6 connections per account. A 4.3 percent yoy increase that is likely due to the carriers new Shared data plans that make it easy to add tablets and additional smartphones to an account. Smartphones make up a growing number of connections, with more than 58 percent of customers now using a smartphone on their line. This is up from 53 percent at the end of Q3 2012 and 44% in the same quarter last year.
Financially, the company saw its service revenues in Q4 2012 jump 8.5 percent year over year and its retail service revenues climb 8.4 percent year over year. Total revenues were $20.0 billion in fourth-quarter 2012, up 9.5 percent year over year.
Retail postpaid ARPA (average revenue per account) now sits at $146.80 per month, a 6.6 percent increase over fourth quarter 2011. Retail churn rate remains a low 1.24 percent, while retail postpaid churn clocks in at 0.95 percent.
Verizon continues to rollout its LTE service and now blankets more than 273 million people in 476 markets across the US. Verizon claims it now covers about 89% of the U.S. population with LTE. The carrier rolled out eight new 4G LTE smartphones and three tablet in the quarters. It has 21.6 million LTE-enabled devices on its network and LTE data accounts for 50 percent of network data traffic.
[Via Verizon Wireless]