AT&T's third quarter earnings come up all roses

AT&T has come clean with its third quarter earnings today, and on paper, it seems like big ol' Number Two doesn't have much to complain about as far as cash flow goes. EPS comes in at 54 cents, 4 cents more per share than the consensus estimate; revenue was up from the prior quarter (though down a bit from the same quarter a year ago) and they clocked in 2 million net adds, 1.4 million of which were postpaid. That now leaves AT&T with a staggering 81.6 million subs, 6.7 million more than a year ago. Meanwhile, 4.3 million new phones were activated on the network -- 3.2 million of which were iPhones, AT&T's best quarter ever for iPhone activations -- which might actually be perceived as a bad sign for the company seeing how it stresses how heavily reliant it is on Apple's baby for customer conquests. Data continues to be a heavy focus with data-focused revenue up 33.6 percent from the same period last year, and for everyone's sake, we hope that every cent of that revenue is going right back into the network.