The Total Pretax Income of these 20 US Big Telecommunications Corps was $38.9 bil in 2011, up only 4% from 2010, and which was a bit of deceleration from the earnings growth of 9% in 2010.
In deriving Pretax Income, I start with Pretax Income under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and then exclude several clearly unusual very large items relative to Pretax Income, such as Special Pension and Other Postretirement Gains/Losses, Asset Impairments, and Gains/Losses on Debt Retirements.
AT&T and Verizon Communications comprised a massive 94% of the Total Pretax Income of all 20 of these US Big Telecommunications Corps. I don't think that is good for the US economy. I also think that it would be good for the US economy if both AT&T and Verizon were broken up. And these breakups would also be good for AT&T and Verizon stockholders.
Below here is the Pretax Income or Pretax Loss of these 20 US Big Telecommunications Corps for each of the most recent three years.
| PTI | PTI | ||||
| % | % | ||||
| Change | Change | ||||
| PTI(L) | PTI(L) | PTI(L) | 2011 | 2010 | |
| 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | vs | vs | |
| mils $s | mils $s | mils $s | 2010 | 2009 | |
| Telecommunications | |||||
| AT&T | 20,087 | 19,957 | 18,733 | 1% | 7% |
| Verizon | 16,448 | 15,739 | 14,957 | 5% | 5% |
| Corning | 3,343 | 3,521 | 1,934 | -5% | 82% |
| CenturyLink | 948 | 1,531 | 813 | -38% | 88% |
| NII Holdings | 542 | 598 | 586 | -9% | 2% |
| ITT Exelis | 537 | 696 | 700 | -23% | -1% |
| American Tower | 638 | 556 | 421 | 15% | 32% |
| MetroPCS | 480 | 417 | 264 | 15% | 58% |
| Windstream | 410 | 508 | 649 | -19% | -22% |
| Telephone&Data Syst | 364 | 286 | 385 | 27% | -26% |
| US Cellular | 313 | 241 | 349 | 30% | -31% |
| Frontier Communicat | 246 | 271 | 193 | -9% | 40% |
| Adtran | 206 | 168 | 108 | 23% | 56% |
| Neustar | 205 | 206 | 192 | 0% | 7% |
| Intelsat | (163) | (346) | (272) | 53% | -27% |
| Ciena | (188) | (332) | (126) | 43% | -163% |
| Leap Wireless | (278) | (211) | (171) | -32% | -23% |
| Avaya | (549) | (853) | (520) | 36% | -64% |
| Clearwire Corp | (2,049) | (2,070) | (1,208) | 1% | -71% |
| Sprint Nextel | (2,636) | (3,299) | (3,494) | 20% | 6% |
| Total all 20 | 38,904 | 37,584 | 34,493 | 4% | 9% |
