AT&T continues to focus on expanding its fiber footprint and 5G deployment to drive growth. The company expects revenue growth in its wireless and broadband businesses as customers demand instant connectivity and higher speeds.

AT&T is actively working to exit its legacy copper network operations, migrating customers to fiber and wireless alternatives. This is part of their strategy to build the network of the future.

AT&T agreed to purchase select spectrum licenses from United States Cellular Corporation (UScellular) for approximately $1,000, subject to closing conditions.

AT&T continues to focus on efficiency, led by its cost transformation initiative. They are restructuring businesses, improving customer service, and sizing support costs with current activity levels.

Customer adoption of new software-based technologies may require higher-quality services from us, and meeting these demands could create supply chain issues and could increase capital costs.

The main contract set to expire in 2025 covers approximately 9,000 employees in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas and is set to expire in April.

Our costs to provide current benefits and funding for future benefits are subject to increases, primarily due to continuing increases in medical and prescription drug costs, in part due to inflation, and can be affected by lower returns on assets held by our pension and other benefit plans, which are reflected in our financial statements for that year.

As a provider of telecommunications and technology services, we sell handsets, wireless data cards, wireless computing devices and customer premises equipment manufactured by various suppliers for use with our voice and data services and depend on suppliers to provide us, directly or through other suppliers, with items such as network equipment, customer premises equipment, and wireless-related equipment such as mobile hotspots, handsets, wirelessly enabled computers, wireless data cards and other connected devices for our customers.

We have international operations, particularly in Mexico, and other countries worldwide where we need to comply with a wide variety of complex local laws, regulations and treaties, and are subject to evolving political environments.

We have multiple wireless competitors in each of our service areas and compete for customers based principally on service/device offerings, price, network quality, reliability, speed, coverage area and customer service.

The communications industry has experienced rapid changes in the past several years. An increasing number of our customers are using mobile devices as their primary means of viewing video.

We will continue to lose legacy voice and data subscribers due to industry-wide secular declines and competitors (e.g., wireless, cable and VoIP providers) who can provide comparable services at lower prices because they are not subject to traditional telephone industry regulation (or the extent of regulation they are subject to is in dispute), utilize different technologies or promote a different business model.

Operations and support expenses decreased in 2024, largely due to lower equipment and selling costs driven by lower wireless sales volumes, partially offset by higher network costs.

We are restructuring businesses, working with regulators and customers to sunset legacy networks, improving customer service and ordering functions through digital transformation, sizing our support costs and staffing with current activity levels, and reassessing overall benefit costs.

We have been and will be undertaking certain transformation initiatives, which are designed to reduce costs, enable legacy rationalization, streamline and modernize distribution and customer service, remove redundancies and simplify and improve processes and support functions.

Wireless and broadband services are undergoing rapid and significant technological changes and a dramatic increase in usage, including, in particular, the demand for faster and seamless usage of data across mobile and fixed devices.

This deployment and other network service enhancements and product launches may not occur as scheduled or at the cost expected due to many factors, including unexpected inflation, delays in determining equipment and wireless handset operating standards, supplier delays, software issues, increases in network and handset component costs, regulatory permitting delays for tower sites or enhancements, or labor-related delays.

Should this software not function as intended or our license agreements provide inadequate protection from intellectual property infringement claims, we could be forced to either substitute (if available) or else spend time to develop alternative technologies at a much higher cost and incur harm to our reputation for reliability, and, as a result, our ability to remain competitive could be materially adversely affected.

In December 2024, our Board of Directors approved an authorization to repurchase up to $10,000 of common stock and terminated the March 2014 authorization.

Depreciation and amortization expense increased in 2024, primarily due to the shortening of estimated economic lives of wireless network equipment that will be replaced earlier than originally anticipated with our Open RAN network modernization efforts.

We have incurred debt to fund significant acquisitions, as well as spectrum purchases needed to compete in our industry.

The potential physical effects of extreme weather events and other potential effects of climate change, such as increased frequency and severity of storms, floods, fires, freezing conditions, sea-level rise and other climate-related events, could damage our networks and cause disruptions in our services, which could adversely affect our operations, infrastructure and financial results.

Although we regularly assess the likelihood of an adverse outcome resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of provisions for taxes, there can be no assurance as to the outcome of these examinations.

Our reputation and brand image could be negatively affected by a number of factors, including quality or reliability issues related to our services, products and operations; cybersecurity incidents and data breaches, including our actual or perceived responses thereto; regulatory compliance; governance issues; our actual or perceived position or lack of position on social and other sensitive matters; and the conduct of our employees and former employees.

An increasing number of our customers are using mobile devices as their primary means of viewing video. In addition, businesses and government bodies are broadly shifting to wireless-based services for homes and infrastructure to improve services to their respective customers and constituencies.

We expect ongoing pressure on pricing during 2025 as we respond to the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment and our competitive marketplace, especially in wireless services.

Our subsidiaries providing wired services are subject to significant federal and state regulation, while many of our competitors are not.