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The failed T-Mobile takeover not only left AT&T short of spectrum, but with a hole in its fourth quarter finances. The costs of the rejected merger, along with $1bn in pension provisions and writedowns, drove the carrier to a net loss of $6.7bn, though revenue was up 3.6% year-on-year to $32.5bn.

AT&T added a net total of 2.5m wireless subscribers in Q411, to reach a base of 103.2m. There were increases in less traditional segments for AT&T - prepaid, wholesale and 'connected devices' (non-phones, including M2M as well as consumer gadgets like tablets).

But contracts and smartphones remain its bread and butter, and smartphones accounted for 80% of postpaid sales in the period. It activated a record 9.4m of these products, up 50% on its previous record of 6.1m, and doubled the number of Android handsets its sold, compared to the year-ago quarter.

But it is still heavily reliant on the iPhone, which accounted for 80% of its new smartphone total - it activated more than 7.6m of the Apple devices, mainly the newly launched 4S. The heavy subsidies associated with the iPhone weighed on AT&T has they had Verizon, as did the overall rise in high end handsets. Overall smartphone subsidies helped reduce operating profit in the mobile division to 15.2% of sales, down from 22.9%. At the end of the year, 56.8% of AT&T's 69.3m postpaid subscribers had smartphones, up from 42.7% a year earlier.

"We had a tremendous year in terms of execution, and we have excellent momentum across our growth platforms," said CEO Randall Stephenson. "This was a blow-out quarter for sales." However, analysts were disappointed with future projections of "mid-single digit or better earnings growth" for 2012, having forecast 11% on average.

Wireless revenues were up 10% year-on-year to $16.7bn, and postpaid ARPU was $63.76, up slightly on $63.69 in the third quarter and somewhat below Wall Street expectations. Churn was up slightly to 1.21%.

Having failed to secure T-Mobile's network, AT&T may have to increase spending in 2012, though the firm said group capex would be about $20bn for 2012, little changed from last year, but with a heavier weighting towards wireless rather than wireline roll-outs. Wireline revenue dropped 1.4% to $9.3bn and AT&T added 208,000 subscribers to its U-verse TV service for a total of 3.8m.

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