The companies listed below represent the ten largest national and regional licensed wireless carriers based on subscriber numbers at the end of the second quarter of this year.

Once again, there was no movement among the top 10 carriers. AT&T continued to rank No. 1 with nearly 73 million subscribers, trailed by Verizon Wireless with close to 69 million. Verizon again surpassed AT&T in net subscriber additions by about 200,000.

Verizon Wireless closed its acquisition of ninth-ranked Rural Cellular Corp. in early August. RCC remains in this ranking because the deal was completed after the close of the second-quarter. Verizon also is in the process of acquiring Alltel Corp. If the deal is approved, it would vault Verizon into the No. 1 spot on the list.

While still facing significant challenges, third-ranked Sprint Nextel cut its churn and slowed its loss of customers to about 900,000 during the quarter from 1 million during the first quarter.

All carriers showed increases in data ARPU during the quarter.

T-Mobile reported its churn increased from 2.6% to 2.7%, which the company blamed on the anniversary of the introduction of two-year contracts, which started expiring during the quarter.

The RCR Wireless News "Top 10" list is the property of RCR Wireless News and should not be construed as an endorsement of any company listed. Please link to this report using the "permalink" button, below.

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Tags: Alltel , AT&T , By The Numbers Carriers , Leap , MetroPCS , T-Mobile , Verizon , Wireless Providers

10 Responses

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1. Jeff
   October 24, 2008 09:37 pm

   Kind of a glaring TYPO in the chart. Subsriber.

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2. Maur
   September 5, 2008 07:11 am

   What is U.S Cellular planning? The Verizon Wireless acquisition of Alltel should be an opportunity for U.S. Cellular considering Verizon reportedly plans to divest 85% of Alltel's pops to gain approval for the 'merger'. If U.S. Cellular has serious plans to grow, then surely they have to be a player.

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3. J.D.
   September 2, 2008 07:05 am

   ARPU - Average Revenue Per UserChurn - A percentage calculated by taking the number of customers who discontinue service divided by the number of existing customers. Example (1 customer discontinues out of a customer base of 100 = 1% churn)

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4. Luke
   August 27, 2008 12:17 pm

   Please define:Churn andARPUThanks!

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5. Rich
   August 22, 2008 06:00 am

   Of course. It does specify wholesale in the footnotes. I feel a little stupid now. ;-)However, I think a ranking by # of retail customers would be far more informative and useful.

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6. frank
   August 20, 2008 02:36 pm

   Tracfone subs are all all resale. Verizon ATT and SPRINT numbers include wholesale accorning to the article.

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7. mikey
   August 20, 2008 02:36 pm

   *Subscriber figures include the total of postpaid, prepaid and wholesale subscribers where applicable. So technically Virgin may be included in Sprints numbers and Net10 or Tracfone could be included in both Verizon and ATT depending upon technology area,

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8. Mike
   August 20, 2008 02:36 pm

   They're both MVNOs and their subs are in one of the larger carriers as wholesale customers.

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9. mikey
   August 20, 2008 02:36 pm

   Both are MVNOs and use other carriers networks and do not hvae network of their own and not considered in the ranking

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10. Rich
    August 20, 2008 02:36 pm

    What about TracFone and Virgin? I thought they each had over 4 million subscribers.

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