We already saw the healthy looking profits yesterday for AT&T and I am sure the telecom giant is saying a great big thank you to Apple’s iPhone, but if you look more closely are the figures apart from the iPhone connected services what else is shining in AT&T third-quarter results.

The Dallas-based phone company did post net income of $3.23 billion which increases its share value by 55 cents, which is a great 5.5 percent increase from the $3.06 billion a year ago. AT&T also posted revenue sales of $31.3 billion which was an increase of 4 percent from the year before.

However, there was a very notable 15.4 percent increase in wireless sales which gave AT&T a very profitable 2 million customers, which takes AT&T nationwide customer base to almost 75 million,

These figures do look great on the surface but if we look a little closer we can see customers are disconnecting local lines at a disturbing rate, and broadband growth has declined more than 70 percent from the same time last year.

With shares in AT&T losing 7.6 percent to around 23.78 after the figures were released yesterday (Oct 22) Of course the risk that AT&T are exposed to is probably the same risk every telecom company is, with the ailing economy.

Source: businessweek