Property and Equipment

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2025

Property, Plant and Equipment [Abstract]

Note 6 – Property and Equipment

The components of property and equipment, excluding amounts transferred to held for sale, were as follows:


(in millions)	Useful Lives	September 30, 2025		December 31, 2024

Land		$	100	$	69
Buildings and equipment	Up to 30 years	4,652		4,377
Wireless communications systems	Up to 20 years	68,770		65,778
Leasehold improvements	Up to 10 years	2,704		2,588
Capitalized software	Up to 8 years	21,041		18,566
Leased wireless devices	Up to 16 months	42		145
Construction in progress	N/A	3,402		3,377
Accumulated depreciation and amortization		(61,993)		(56,367)

Property and equipment, net		$	38,718	$	38,533

Total depreciation expense relating to property and equipment and financing lease right-of-use assets was $3.2 billion and $2.9 billion for the three months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, and $9.1 billion and $9.2 billion for the nine months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively.

We capitalize interest associated with the acquisition or construction of certain property and equipment and spectrum intangible assets. We recognized capitalized interest of $13 million and $9 million for the three months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively, and $33 million and $26 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2025 and 2024, respectively.

Asset retirement obligations are primarily for certain legal obligations to remediate leased property on which our network infrastructure and administrative assets are located.

Activity in our asset retirement obligations for the nine months ended September 30, 2025, was as follows:


(in millions)	Asset Retirement Obligations

Asset retirement obligations, beginning of year	$	1,535
Fair value of liabilities acquired from the UScellular Acquisition	165
Liabilities incurred	18
Liabilities settled	(40)
Accretion expense	52



Asset retirement obligations, end of period	$	1,730

Classified on the condensed consolidated balance sheets as:

Other current liabilities	$	117
Other long-term liabilities	1,613

The corresponding assets, net of accumulated depreciation, related to asset retirement obligations were $565 million and $423 million as of September 30, 2025 and December 31, 2024, respectively.

Billing System Impairment

In connection with our accelerated digital transformation initiatives, including streamlining our billing technology, we evaluated our billing system architecture strategy and concluded components of our billing system replacement plan and associated development will no longer serve our future needs. As a result, we recorded a non-cash impairment of $278 million related to capitalized software development costs during the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025, within Impairment expense on our Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income.