AT&T and Verizon are now tied for the rank of largest US mobile carrier

Ever since it acquired Alltel back in 2009, Verizon has been indisputably at the top of the US mobile carrier heap in terms of subscribers. But AT&T is again vying for that top spot, thanks to its recent acquisition of regional operator Leap Wireless, according to a new report by Chetan Sharma Consulting.

At the end of the first quarter, AT&T and Verizon both controlled 34 percent of the mobile subscriptions in the US, according to Sharma’s estimates. It’s hard to pin exact numbers on those carriers, though, since both report subscribers differently.

At the end of March, AT&T had 116 million total connections, but that number includes all of its wholesale subscribers (those that connect with one of AT&T’s mobile virtual network operator partners) and machine-to-machine links attached to cars, gadgets and other devices in the Internet of things. Verizon doesn’t report any of those numbers. It only reveals business and consumer retail subscribers buying their service directly from Verizon. That number totaled 103 million.

By Sharma’s calculations just as many people are connecting their phones and tablets and hotspots to AT&T’s network as Verizon. Any way you look at it, these two carriers are huge. They collectively control 68 percent of the US wireless market.