Cingular turned a profit of $354m in the first three months of the year, on revenues of $9bn - higher than Intel, and 9 per cent higher than a year ago.

Subscriber growth exceeded expectations, with 1.7m net additions, although 600,000 of these are potentially less lucrative pay-as-you-go customers.

Cingular had added 1.8m net subscribers in the preceding quarter. Cingular is getting better at its retaining customers. While gross additions are flat year on year and slightly down sequentially at 4.7m, churn is down to 1.9m.

Monthly ARPU, or average revenue per subscriber, reflected the changing composition of the user base, and it fell slightly to $48.48 - down 2.3 per cent year on year. Data ARPU was $5.22 per user month, up from $3.70 a year ago.

The company recorded $234m in continuing merger costs and wrote down $359m of intangibles as a result of its acquisition of AT&T Wireless.

Cingular ended Q1 2006 with 55.8m mobile subscribers, up from 5.5m a year ago.®