Randall Stephenson
Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead
Yes, so Batya, it's good to hear from you. With regard to bundling on wireless churn, I can't give you a number of basis points, a precision amount of basis points in there. What I can point to is if you look at specifically postpaid phone, which is where the majority are really value-focused bundling is done, we're getting record levels of the low churn. And we attribute at least part of that to the bundling aspect. So, what we're seeing is working. That's the first thing. Secondly, we're also seeing what was a very high level, 700,000 increase year-over-year in smartphone gross adds and upgrades. It continue to significant level of BYOD devices. So, what we're seeing is with this bundling opportunity, customers are continuing to come back to us that have been with us for a while and your customers are coming to us. That's what resulted, not only the great subscriber gains for the quarter, but in some of that, if you will, impact on cost and margins. But when you look at the total profitability, we're very pleased with that and when you look at the churn impacts of that for years to come, you can understand why we make that lifetime value investment. So, that's how we're seeing that. With regard to the video products, we're seeing a similar -- once again I can't point directly as a measurement for basis points. But as I mentioned specifically with fiber, it's cut in half on the bundling. But on Wireless, we're also seeing lowered churn. So, that's been, if you will, very helpful to the overall business. But then when you put those multiple products together and it's not only the reduction service cost with the right to building and administration and so on and so forth, but it's also with that total customers and the ability to track all their services, we do see a long-term past-due greater value creation. That's how we're thinking about that bundling strategy, not on a day-to-day basis, but when you look at these, for example, going to turn on that longer term basis. Churn at these levels is implying 100-month and more lives for these smartphones, tremendous, tremendous opportunities. So, that's what we're looking towards. Lastly, we're going to be able to continue to cut cost. And as we continue to cut cost through virtualization and automization [ph], we're going to be able to continue to maintain. We have been on our path for the last four quarters of setting records in Wireless service margins and we chose this quarter to reinvest in our customer base. When you got churn at those sub-90 basis point levels, it seems like the right thing to do. And with tax reform and the other things that are going on in our business, we feel very comfortable that it is the right thing to do.