AT&T added more objects than people to its network in the third quarter of this year.

The U.S. telco's Q3 net customer additions numbered 2.01 million, it announced on Wednesday. That figure included 1.28 million connected devices, 500,000 of which were connected cars.

Its 785,000 postpaid subscriber additions were down sequentially but more than twice as many as it recorded in the year-ago quarter. Its smartphone net adds came in at 466,000, while postpaid tablet net adds reached 434,000. Arch-rival Verizon earlier this week reported 1.53 million net customer additions for the same quarter, driven by 1.1 million new postpaid tablet users.

AT&T's mobile business generated $18.34 billion in revenues in Q3, up 5% on the year-ago quarter, and contributed 56% to the telco's overall top line. Group revenues came in at $32.96 billion, up 2.5%.

The telco lowered its consolidated revenue growth guidance to 3%-4%, having previously predicted growth "in the 5% range".

The new guidance takes into account the impact of fewer than expected gross additions to its Next programme, which enables users to buy a new smartphone in monthly instalments, and a higher than expected number of bring your own device (BYOD) customer additions.

"Our strategy is on track and our investments in giving customers best-in-class service to access content everywhere and on any screen continue to pay off," said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, in a statement. "We had strong subscriber growth in wireless and U-verse, and our strategic business services revenues continued to post double-digit growth."

U-verse, including broadband, TV and VoIP, accounted for 64% of AT&T's wireline consumer revenues, up from 54% in the year-earlier quarter. In Q3 AT&T added 601,000 U-verse broadband customers and 216,000 TV customers.

AT&T's strategic business services include Ethernet, cloud, hosting and security services. Revenue from these services increased by 14.3% and represent 28% of the telco's business wireline revenues. However, overall AT&T saw turnover from its business solutions unit fall by 2% to $8.67 billion.

The telco's bottom line contracted by 21% to $3 billion.