Telephone & Data Systems Inc. Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

  • download
  • Print
  • Recommend
  • 0

2009-11-05 18:09:08.0

Tags: Advertisement, Smart Phone, Call Transcript, Handset, Earnings, Trial, Telephone & Data Systems Inc., Cellular Phones, Smart Phones, Handhelds, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Hardware, Seeking Alpha, Telephone and Data Systems Inc.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Rick Prentiss - Raymond James.

Rick Prentiss - Raymond James

First question, on the U.S. Cellular side, I missed some of the comments on LTE, can you mention again the technical trial exactly when you would start and also what are your early indications on what kind of the costs might be to roll out in LTE network. What do you have to do to your network?

Jay Ellison

I’ll give you a little flavor some of that, then Steve can jump in on. We mentioned a trial beginning late this year. So most likely based on timelines right now and evaluations we’re doing relative to infrastructure providers will be in the December timeframe and pure technical trial internal no customers or anything along those lines.

It’s also probably way too early for us to start talking about cost on LTE, until we determine a number of things from the trial and then our rollout schedule and things along those lines as well as working with handset provider. The only think I’d add is I think that we would expect that technical trial to run probably through middle of next year. So I think once that’s complete we’ll have a much better sense of cost to deploy.

Rick Prentiss - Raymond James

Probably not to put words in your mouth, but as you look at 2010, probably not a lot of impact on the CapEx side from a LTE potential?

Ken Meyers

No, I have not in 2010. I think we’d be looking beyond that.

Rick Prentiss - Raymond James

Then you mentioned several times obviously, the smartphones, how important they are the handset lineup, what percent of your base and of your third quarter gross ads were smartphone Air Cards etc.?

Jay Ellison

I don’t think we have the smartcard broken down. I could give you that?

Ken Meyers

In the Q3, smartphones and the premium phone, a lot of the internet stuff that almost 22% of gross ads. With really significant quarter-over-quarter jump in that what we’re calling our premium category.

Jay Ellison

I think I mentioned, Rick that sales of those smartphones and premium devices are up almost 4X year-over-year.

Rick Prentiss - Raymond James

Then something else you mentioned, I think Jay, in your comments was the ads increased month-to-month, it wasn’t just three months. I think you said than four months, is that to imply October or going back to June?

 

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Please add your comment:

  1. You are currently: a Guest |
  2.  

Basic HTML tags that work in comments are: bold (<b></b>), italic (<i></i>), underline (<u></u>), and hyperlink (<a href></a)

advertisement
advertisement
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
  • Click Here
advertisement