Grading the top U.S. wireless carriers in Q2

The second-quarter earnings season is over, and it's time to take stock of how things have shaken out. Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) surged back to subscriber growth in the quarter, but the vast majority of its roughly 1.4 million new subscribers in the period bought tablets, not phones. AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T) added more than 1 million net postpaid subscribers in the second quarter, its best performance in the postpaid market in nearly five years. Unlike Verizon, the vast majority of AT&T's postpaid addsin the second quarter came from smartphones. Sprint (NYSE: S) confirmed that it is testing new pricing as it tries to regain momentum in the market; in the meantime, the carrier lost 181,000 postpaid customers in the second quarter. And then there was T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS), which continued to chug along with solid growth, adding 1.47 million total net new subscribers in the second quarter, including 908,000 branded postpaid net adds.

The following charts the top U.S. wireless carriers in the second quarter of 2014 by subscriber base, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, and includes major metrics--such as churn, ARPU and revenue--of each carrier. The subscriber figures include both retail and wholesale customers. As the second-quarter reporting season comes to a close, it's time to start parsing the information to see which carriers slipped and which managed to get ahead. Special report