4Q10 Ten Largest Providers

Not Surprisingly, AT&T and Verizon Top the Charts

For both wireline and wireless voice service, AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon (NYSE:VZ) were the top two providers at the end of 2010, while in the video category, AT&T came in fifth and Verizon ranked seventh—had AT&T not sold its cable ops to Comcast (Nasdaq:CMCSA) a few years back, it would probably be number 1 in all three categories!  The company edged past Verizon in the fourth quarter to take the number one spot in wireless, with 95.5m subs, and of course the pending acquisition of T-Mobile, if it goes through, will firmly cement AT&T in the top wireless slot.

In the wireline voice category, Qwest’s 8.9m connections ranked it third; now that the CenturyLink/ Qwest (NYSE:CTL) deal is done, the combined company will remain in third place, with more than 15m wireline voice connections. 

Comcast remained the top video service provider, with 22.8m subs, followed by satellite concerns DirecTV (Nasdaq:DTV) and DISH Network (Nasdaq:DISH), with 19.2m and 14.1m subs, respectively.  Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) ranked fourth, with 12.4m subscribers.