Cingular Profit Falls

Cingular posted solid third-quarter results Wednesday, adding 657,000 new users and boosting revenue by 5% from a year ago.

For the quarter ended last month, the Atlanta-based venture of SBC (SBC Quote) and BellSouth (BLS Quote) reported income of $145 million, down 21% from a year ago. But revenue rose to $4.26 billion from $4.06 billion a year earlier, driven by strong gains in text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile email, downloadable ringtones, games and photo messaging.

Cingular said it had 2.8 million gross customer additions for the quarter and that its monthly customer defections, as measured by so-called churn, were roughly flat at 2.8%. ...