Summary
- AT&T reported second-quarter revenue of $31.6 billion, 2.3% above the year-earlier period.
- It recorded 367,000 fibre and 279,000 fixed-wireless net additions, producing 646,000 consumer and business internet additions.
- Postpaid-phone net additions reached 432,000; together, the product groups took advanced-connectivity additions above one million.
- The company reached 38.6 million locations with fibre and still targets more than 40 million by year-end, but locations passed are not subscribers.
- AT&T maintained its financial guidance and accelerated planned 2026 share repurchases to approximately $10 billion.
The headline says AT&T added more than one million advanced-connectivity customers. That is true, but it is not one market. The count brings together a fixed line drilled into a building, a wireless home connection using spare network capacity and a postpaid phone account. Each solves a different coverage problem and carries a different capital profile.
For the second quarter, the fixed-internet pieces were unusually balanced. Fibre supplied 367,000 net additions and fixed wireless supplied 279,000. Combined, consumer and business internet additions reached 646,000. A further 432,000 postpaid-phone additions pushed the multi-product headline above one million.
Fixed wireless is buying time and reach
Fibre remains AT&T’s preferred long-life home-access asset. The operator said its network now reaches 38.6 million consumer and business locations, more than one million above the previous quarter. It expects to exceed 40 million by the end of 2026 and 60 million by the end of 2030.
Those are locations passed, not paying fibre accounts. The distinction matters because construction creates an option to sell; adoption turns that option into service revenue. AT&T did not convert 38.6 million households into customers during the quarter.
Fixed wireless performs another job. It can enter places before fibre arrives, serve locations where a new physical drop is uneconomic, or protect a customer relationship while the operator retires copper. Its 279,000 additions do not prove that radio access will replace fibre. They show that AT&T can monetise the mobile network as a second home-internet route while construction continues.
The economics need to be watched separately. A fibre connection consumes construction capital but can offer high capacity and long asset life. Fixed wireless avoids the final physical line but competes for spectrum and cell capacity with mobile traffic. A combined additions number cannot reveal whether either cohort will produce the same margin, retention or usage profile.
Convergence is beginning to show in the household
AT&T said 42.5% of households taking its advanced home-internet products also chose AT&T wireless. That is the operating argument for building both access layers: a household with several services may be less likely to leave, easier to support and cheaper to market to than separate customers.
The quarter does not prove that every bundle is profitable. It does show that the company can acquire fixed and mobile relationships at the same time. Advanced-connectivity service revenue rose 5.1% to $23.5 billion, while legacy service revenue continued to fall as the copper network was decommissioned.
Postpaid-phone churn was 0.86%, adding a retention measure to the 432,000 net additions. It describes the phone base, not the churn of every converged household or internet cohort.
Reported revenue of $31.6 billion rose 2.3%, partly reflecting the first-quarter acquisition of Lumen’s mass-market fibre business. That acquisition contribution means the reported top-line gain should not be described as purely organic. Free cash flow was $4.7 billion, against $4.4 billion a year earlier.
AT&T identifies both its $12.3 billion adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow as non-GAAP measures. Capital investment was $6.1 billion for the quarter, while net debt stood at $126.4 billion; those obligations define how much of the cash improvement is genuinely available for discretionary return.
The buyback is a confidence signal, not another network metric
AT&T kept its 2026 and multi-year financial guidance. It still expects 2026 free cash flow of at least $18 billion, annual capital investment of $23 billion to $24 billion through 2028 and advanced-connectivity service-revenue growth of at least 5% this year.
What changed was the pace of capital return. Management now plans approximately $10 billion of share repurchases during 2026 as part of a broader 2026–2028 programme. That amount has not already been spent. The quarter returned $4.1 billion to shareholders, including about $2.2 billion of common-stock repurchases under the existing authorisation.
The harder test comes after the additions headline. Investors need conversion rates from fibre locations passed to paying customers, capacity behaviour as fixed-wireless usage grows, churn across converged households and evidence that copper costs actually disappear. The second quarter shows three acquisition engines running together. It does not make their economics interchangeable.