Verizon Communications saw revenue grow 5.3 percent in the first quarter, helped him acquire Alltel. But wireless competition heating with AT & T, which has seen strong growth because of the iPhone.

For the three months ended March 31, Verizon reported net income of $ 3.2 billion, or 58 cents per share, narrowly beating last year’s revenues of $ 3.0 billion, or 58 cents a year. Revenues amounted to about 12 percent, to $ 26.6 billion, mainly due to the acquisition of regional wireless Alltel. If Alltel has been a part of Verizon Business a year ago, the increase would be about 3.3 percent.

Verizon Wireless added 1.3 million net customers during the quarter, bringing the total number of subscribers to 86.6 million. Verizon overall customer base also includes 13.2 million customers from Alltel. Verizon to acquire Alltel in the past year has made the biggest operator of wireless operator in the United States.

In general, the company is well under difficult economic conditions.

“As expected, we had some headwinds going into this quarter,” Chief Operating Officer Denny Strigl said at a conference with analysts and investors. But the results reflect solid performance and durability of our consolidated business model and our focus on investing in our crowned jewels, our Fios and wireless networks. ”

Wireless was a strong engine of growth for Verizon in the next few quarters. And Verizon Wireless, which is jointly owned by Vodafone, the growth of sales in wireless at 29.6 per cent to $ 15.1 billion.

However, it appears that several wells in strong Verizon Wireless’ armor. Verizon also reported that its churn rate - or rate at which people switch wireless services - rose to 1.47 percent from 1.19 percent. Verizon, as a rule, the lowest churn rates of the four largest U.S. wireless company.

Strigl said the losses are the customer first and foremost because of the economic downturn. In particular, he said, corporate customers were to cancel the data card plans, and customers were canceling the fourth and fifth lines. But some losses could also be due to increased competition from AT & T, which is the exclusive carrier in the United States in the Apple iPhone.

Last week, AT & T reported strong sales and earnings of $ 1.2 million wireless customers during the first quarter. Much of AT & T subscriber growth came from new users of iPhone. At the conference last week, AT & T managers have indicated that a significant proportion of new subscribers as new iPhone customers.

Even Verizon has worked hard to bring new devices, such as the BlackBerry Storm, on its network, he could not find the device in accordance with the popularity or “coolness” in the iPhone. There are rumors that the company is negotiating with Apple offers a device next year, but the general director Ivan Seidenberg hinted recently in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, that any deal with Apple would be for the device to work on its 4G network, which will begin next year.

During a call with analysts, Strigl said that nothing new to report regarding the iPhone.

“We have said in the past that we are always open to discuss any vendor, he said.” But we have no announcements from Apple today. ”

Strigl added that the company is seeing strong demand for smartphones. In particular, he said, smartphones and PDA sales up 41 percent of the company, direct sales of the device during the quarter, and that does not include the device sells Alltel.

With respect to the merger Alltel, which closed in late 2008, Strigl said the company will begin to integrate the billing system at the end of this year and that he would move Alltel “signs” and the marketing of Verizon Wireless brand in time for the holiday buying season.

Verizon also reported growth in fiber to the home business called Fios. The company added 299,000 net TV customers and 298,000 net Internet subscribers during the quarter. Verizon Fios TV has subscribership 2,2 million people and a total of Fios Internet subscribership 2,8 million.