Verizon’s Christmas quarter: 1.6M new subscribers, $5B quarterly profit

verizon wireless

Verizon Wireless, the nation’s top wireless carrier, on Tuesday reported its earnings for the 2013 holiday quarter. Despite notable gains from T-Mobile, whose attention-seeking CEO earned his company a lot of coverage while lambasting competitors, Verizon has managed to add 1.6 million new contract subscribers during the Christmas quarter of last year, pushing its total subscriber count to 102.8 million customers.

Quarterly net income of the wireless division was $5.07 billion on $21.1 billion in revenue, or $7.9 billion on $31 billion in revenue for Verizon Communications.

The figure compares favorably to a massive $1.93 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2012, attributed to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and rising costs in employee pensions. More tidbits below the fold…

According to Verizon’s earnings release, its 4G LTE service is now available to nearly 305 million people, or 97 percent of the US population, in more than 500 markets.

About 69 percent of Verizon’s data traffic is now LTE.

The carrier has activated nine million new LTE devices in the quarter, which includes smartphones, tablets and other LTE-enalbed devices. It’s interesting that the company is no longer reporting iPhone activations.

The Big Red carrier has also agreed to buy OnCue, Intel’s failed streaming TV project as it formally announced the acquisition of Intel’s Media unit. The deal will close early in the first quarter and Verizon plans to keep “substantially all” of Intel Media’s 350 employees.

Verizon plans to fold Intel’s pay TV technology into its FiOS video service.

During the quarter, the wireless giant announced intent to buy content delivery company EdgeCast and video delivery firm upLynk, for about $500 million.

They also introduced a new $20 Share Everything plan in the quarter and started selling the budget Moto G handset for $100 off-contract.