Immigration Policies Threaten Wireless Subscriber Growth: Analyst
A drop in immigrants to the U.S. will inevitably put downward pressure on wireless carriers' subscriber numbers, MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett warned Thursday. It will take some time to fully assess the effects of the Trump administration’s actions against immigrants, Moffett told investors.
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“To summarize, we don’t know how many people are actually entering the country -- even visa data is only published annually -- but the sharp drop in encounters at points of entry suggests that significantly fewer people are even trying to,” Moffett said: “The reason we are so focused on this issue is because of the sheer magnitude of the contribution that immigration has made to overall U.S. population growth. Indeed, population growth based solely on births and deaths would now be negative in the U.S.; immigration accounts for all the nation’s population growth.”
The other headline for Q1 is that retail postpaid phone subscriber net adds for the big three carriers came in at 488,000, a 32.3% decrease from the same period a year ago, Moffett said. The good news for AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon was that prepaid net subscriber numbers rose by 47,000, after “a steep loss” of 348,000 a year ago.