Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ric Prentiss – Raymond James.
Ric Prentiss – Raymond James
On the US side on the net adds we had modeled the TDMA system flushing out in the fiscal second quarter. I think I heard from you that its complete, it’s behind you in the first quarter. Was it still kind of in the couple thousand range that we had been thinking last quarter then?
Michael Small
We completed it last quarter it’s completely shut down at this stage and I think it was about 2,400 was the incremental impact on churn.
Ric Prentiss – Raymond James
On the roaming side the 18% decline in the yield from a new contract last year, as you look at your ’09 guidance what are your thoughts as far as what’s baked into that as far as any more reduction in yield versus MOU growth?
Michael Small
On the roaming front we think the rate should be stable for the share it will just be a function of mix of traffic between different providers and may have a minimal impact on rate but there are no scheduled step downs. The question is how much roaming do our major partners decide to turn off during the course of the year and that’s really unpredictable to us. In the long term we believe they will choose to roam less but in any given period of time either quarterly or even on a yearly basis it’s hard to predict.
Ric Prentiss – Raymond James
Did you guys see any impact on the economy on the roaming side as far as high gas prices or people traveling less?
Michael Small
Our roaming traffic has been strong in minutes and in fact as a result of the hurricane that came through Louisiana we’ll actually see a boost in roaming traffic for the first month of the second quarter based on our networks outperformed roaming partners that weren’t so their traffic tended to come our way. That obviously will be a temporary one but that will provide strength in the second quarter. While we’re on that subject, Phil, why don’t you address a little of some of the operational impact of the hurricanes.
Phil Mayberry
We survived with very little physical damage. We had some water in some cell sights and some minor electronic equipment. The two major issues that we had to fight through were Telco connectivity where on some cell sights we lost telephone company supply backhaul and commercial power of course we put in 60 generators and moved them from cell sight to cell sight recharging batteries and maintained real good network integrity and quality throughout most all of the hurricane time.
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