The nation’s top three wireless service operators have released their Q3 2025 results. Here is Circana’s quick take on the major trends emerging from the financials:
T-Mobile’s Postpaid Base Continues to Expand
T-Mobile once again led the industry, adding one million new postpaid phone lines — up from 865K in Q3 2024. This marks the carrier’s best quarterly performance in the past decade. Notably, 215K of these new postpaid users migrated from Metro or other prepaid brands owned by T-Mobile. This is the highest prepaid-to-postpaid migration figure reported by the carrier in the past three years, reflecting the carrier’s continued success in targeting prepaid customers with improved credit scores and offering device financing to reduce future churn.
As a result of the strong migration, T-Mobile’s prepaid base grew by only 43K new lines. It’s worth noting that T-Mobile’s prepaid ARPU declined from $35.81 in Q3 2024 to $33.93 in Q3 2025, largely due to the migration of higher-ARPU prepaid customers to postpaid plans.
Q3 2025 also marked the first quarter T-Mobile reported subscriber figures from its acquisition of USCellular. The carrier’s postpaid base now includes nearly 3.7 million lines (390K of which are non-phone connections) from the acquisition. With close to 85 million postpaid phone customers, T-Mobile is on track to become the largest U.S. carrier in terms of postpaid consumer phone lines. The reality is somewhat murky here, as T-Mobile does not break out consumer vs business lines. However, we believe that the company has a relatively low share of business lines at the moment, while Verizon has a (published) 74 million consumer postpaid lines. As such, expect T-Mobile to be tracking the real number closely and if/when the carrier exceeds Verizon’s consumer number, it is safe to expect an announcement from T-Mobile celebrating the fact.
T-Mobile also acquired nearly 400K USCellular prepaid lines, further solidifying its position as the nation’s largest prepaid provider with close to 26 million connections.
AT&T Pushes Broadband-Driven Convergence
AT&T reported another strong quarter, adding 405K new postpaid phone subscribers — nearly identical to its performance in Q3 2024. This growth is attributed to AT&T’s aggressive convergence strategy, with over 40% of AT&T Fiber households now also subscribing to AT&T Mobility services. The carrier continues to emphasize its long-term fiber network build-out and is expected to increase mobile adoption among fiber customers through bundled offers featuring device subsidies and integrated rate plans.
AT&T’s ARPU performance has struggled in 2025, a direct result of its aggressive marketing approach, which is expected to yield long-term benefits.
Q3 2025 was also challenging for AT&T’s prepaid business, which contracted by 167K connections — 83K of which were prepaid phone lines. While AT&T does not disclose prepaid-to-postpaid migration figures, Circana’s Mobile Consumer Tracking data shows that a quarter of AT&T prepaid users who churned in 2025 switched to AT&T postpaid services.
Verizon Struggles to Protect Its Postpaid Base
Verizon was the last of the Big 3 to report earnings, and while it slightly exceeded revenue guidance, its Q3 operational results help explain the recent leadership change. The carrier lost 81K consumer retail postpaid connections, including 7K postpaid phone lines during the quarter. This brings Verizon’s cumulative net loss of consumer postpaid phone lines in 2025 to 414K.
The enterprise segment, which had previously offset consumer losses, also underperformed—adding just 51K postpaid phone lines compared to 149K in Q3 2024. On a positive note, Verizon’s prepaid base (excluding Safelink Lifeline) grew modestly by 47K, though this was below last year’s growth.
Verizon’s new leadership has announced a customer-first, value-driven strategy aimed at reversing the downward trend. While Verizon continues to lead in perceived network quality in Circana’s latest Connected Intelligence Mobility survey, competitors have closed the gap with improved network assets. Despite efforts to enhance price competitiveness, Verizon is still viewed as a premium service, contributing to churn toward rivals like T-Mobile and cable MVNOs such as Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile. However, Verizon’s wholesale agreements with these MVNOs continue to help offset some revenue losses.
Smartphone Upgrade Trajectory Aligns with Projections
New smartphone volumes continue to grow in line with Circana’s projections of near double-digit annual growth, driven by the record-high smartphone age observed in 2024. All major carriers reported increases in postpaid device upgrade rates:
• T-Mobile: 2.6% → 2.7%
• AT&T: 3.5% → 4.1%
• Verizon: 3.2% → 3.6%
This momentum is expected to continue into Q4, fueled by aging devices and aggressive promotions targeting legacy plan holders upgrading to premium rate plans.
FWA Growth Continues at Full Speed
T-Mobile and Verizon’s 5G-based Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) home internet services reached a combined 13.4 million customers by the end of Q3 2025. T-Mobile leads with 8 million connections, adding 500K new customers in the quarter. Verizon added 261K new FWA subscribers, split almost evenly between consumer and enterprise segments.
AT&T, a late entrant to the FWA space, surpassed Verizon in Q3 with 270K new customers for its Internet Air service, bringing its total FWA base to nearly 1.3 million. AT&T’s FWA growth is expected to accelerate following its acquisition of low- and mid-band spectrum from Echostar, which will provide the necessary bandwidth to expand service offerings.