AT&T's LTE Network Is Focused on Video, CFO Says

DirecTV buy gives AT&T an advantage over its main rivals. “Dish [Network] isn't going to have the broadband capability, so they're not going to have the owner's economics over wireless,” he said. “Verizon is not going to have the broadband capabilities. They don't have the satellite or the scale in delivering and negotiating with content providers.” Stephens also said he welcomes a move by Apple to start allowing customers to buy iPhones through extended payments. “Quite simply from a very somewhat selfish viewpoint, if the handset manufacturers want to take the responsibility for the $600 financing and it doesn't have to go on our balance sheet, that's not necessarily a bad thing for us at all,” he said Wednesday. “We sell a lot more iPhones on our accounts than Apple does. … I think they have about 200 stores, we have about 2,300.” Stephens said AT&T is making a $3 billion investment in the Mexican wireless market and expects to cover 40 million POPS by the end of the year with LTE. “Those will be the ones that certainly were easier to do in denser areas and higher revenue opportunities,” Stephens said. “We are looking forward to growing customers both in the prepaid and the postpaid base, but I want to tell you that the success is also going to be in how much we attract in the U.S. business and how much more business we get from U.S. consumers and business customers who want to do business in Mexico.”