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.

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.®

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