AT&T: What iPhone Defections?AT&T: What iPhone Defections?

AT&T has not seen massive iPhone customer defections in the wake of Apple's iPhone becoming available for sale from Verizon Wireless and Sprint.

"Churn has not moved at all," said Glen Lurie, president of emerging devices for AT&T, at a conference in Barcelona, Spain. Churn is the percentage of a carrier's customers that leave it to go to another provider. In its most recent quarterly report, AT&T said churn declined to 1.28% versus 1.32% in the year-ago quarter and 1.43% in the second quarter of 2011. Postpaid churn was 1.15%, compared to 1.14% in the year-ago quarter and 1.15% in the second quarter of 2011. Those are pretty darned good figures.

It is also worth pointing out that AT&T alone was responsible for one million of the four million iPhone 4Ses sold during the opening weekend of availability. The device was also sold opening weekend by Verizon, Sprint, and several carriers in foreign markets.

"It's no surprise that customers are clamoring for iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors'," said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO in a statement made in October.

[AT&T is growing its subscriber base, but so is Verizon. See Verizon Maintains Lead In U.S. Wireless Market.]

AT&T's Lurie notes that the company continues to have a good relationship with Apple. He says the iPhone 4S is so popular that it has created some supply issues, with a one- to two-week wait still the norm for new customers.

Perhaps more importantly, Lurie said that CIOs have come around to accepting iOS and its benefits in the enterprise --paving the way for the iPhone to penetrate business markets.

This isn't what anyone expected.

AT&T caught grief from iPhone users (and the media) for years over poor voice service and choppy Internet speeds. AT&T took some hard lumps, bucked up, and improved its network performance. The results are evident.

With its churn rate unchanged in recent quarters, iPhone owners are clearly not running for the Sprint and Verizon hills when their contracts expire. They're sticking with AT&T (for the time being). One reason, as de la Vega noted above, is the data speeds.

On AT&T's HSPA+ network, iPhone 4S can reach theoretical max download speeds of 14.4 Mbps. Real-world AT&T speeds are in the 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps range, which is nice and healthy. On Verizon and Sprint's CDMA-EVDO 3G networks, theoretical maximum download speeds are 3.1 Mbps, with real-world speeds clocking in at a tortoise-like 800 Kbps to 1.7 Mbps.

Bottom line: AT&T's not sweating it.