BCE profit jumps amid success of new handsets

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(Reuters)

By Wojtek Dabrowski

TORONTO (Reuters) - BCE Inc , Canada's biggest phone company, posted a jump in quarterly profit that topped analyst expectations on Thursday as subscribers flocked to new mobile phones despite a weak economy.

BCE -- which began selling Apple's popular iPhone this month -- added 122,000 postpaid, or longer-term, wireless subscribers in the quarter. That was up 8 percent from a year earlier and a third-quarter record for the company.

However, while subscriber growth was strong, Montreal-based BCE said that average monthly revenue per postpaid wireless user fell by C$3.98 to C$64.09.

The drop was due to subscriber "migration to lower rate plans, lower usage and lower roaming revenues as customers reacted to a weaker economy," BCE said.

BCE, owner of Bell Canada, earned C$584 million ($556.2 million), or 72 Canadian cents a share, in the third quarter. That was up from a profit of C$280 million, or 30 Canadian cents a share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose to C$4.46 billion, from C$4.44 billion a year earlier.

Analysts were expecting the company to earn 70 Canadian cents a share on revenue of C$4.5 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

BCE had partnered with rival Telus Corp to build a network upgrade that would let both companies sell next-generation devices like the iPhone. The network launched this month.

Until now, Rogers Communications Inc -- owner of the country's biggest wireless carrier -- was the only service provider to sell the iPhone in Canada.

($1=$1.05 Canadian)

(Reporting by Wojtek Dabrowski; editing by Derek Caney, Dave Zimmerman)