AT&T, the new owner of Mexican mobile operator Iusacell, has ‘cut’ the unit’s subscriber total dramatically to 5.97 million , compared to the figure of 9.20 million cited when the USD2.5 billion takeover deal closed in January this year. AT&T spokeswoman Mari Melguizo told Fierce Wireless: ‘Iusacell’s reporting methodology differed from AT&T’s, and once we completed the acquisition, we conformed it to our reporting standards. This kind of one-time adjustment is standard.’ In addition, AT&T has confirmed that Iusacell, whose previous owner Grupo Salinas never reported the carrier’s financial numbers in detail, posted a USD27 million operating loss for the first quarter of 2015.
The drastically reduced subscriber metric underlines the size of the task faced by AT&T south of the border. The telco, which plans to merge Iusacell with a second mobile firm, Nextel Mexico, has suggested that it will be several years before it is able to compete with America Movil (AM)-backed Telcel on an even footing. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Mexico and the man who will lead the combined company, admitted: ‘We certainly have our work cut out … We are moving into a heavy investment period. We are investing for the future in a long-term horizon and you’ll see that reflected in our results … Even in the first two years we will make substantial progress in terms of elevating the experience in Mexico and creating a compelling proposition for customers to increasingly come to AT&T.’