AT&T Inc. posted a 30% bump in second-quarter earnings as compared to the same period last year.  Ma Bell (does anyone call it that anymore?) said today it raked in $3.77 billion during 2Q '08 as compared with $2.90 billion during 2Q '07, according to the Associated Press.

MocoNews.net also reports that AT&T reported a whopping 52% surge in data usage, accounting for a good chunk of all that new cash.  And without naming names (well, okay, they did), it seems that AT&T's quite taken with current BFF Apple: "AT&T had nothing but praise for the iPhone. It noted that customers
who took smartphone devices such as the iPhone typically have ARPU's
double the company average and increasingly expects more customers to
migrate to these devices. It reported that in the first 12 days
following launch, sales of the iPhone 3G were nearly double those of
the original iPhone which debuted last summer."