For the second quarter ending June 30, the Little Rock, Arkansas-based company more than doubled net income to $402m from $262.6m in the year-ago quarter. This figure included gains from the sale of Fidelity National Financial shares. Revenue meanwhile rose to $2.26bn from $2.04bn a year ago.

Alltel derives most of its revenue from wireless because like many other carriers, its local telephone business is declining as consumers use mobile phones more often than their home phones. Average monthly revenue per user rose to $50.55 from $47.79 a year ago. Total churn, or customer cancellation rate, was 1.99%, down slightly from 2% a year ago.

Alltel said it added 53,693 customers in the quarter excluding subscribers from acquisitions. However, these customer additions were below industry averages, and despite the strong results, shares in the carrier fell 1.9% on the New York Stock Exchange to $64.38 in early trading Thursday.

Earlier this week, Alltel closed the acquisition of its smaller rival, Western Wireless. It was back in January 2005 that Alltel finally confirmed much-leaked speculation it would pay $4.3bn for Western Wireless. It assumed the company’s net debt of $1.5bn. The deal created the US’s fifth largest wireless carrier, with 10 million mobile customers in 34 states, and 1.6 million international customers in six countries.

Bellevue, Washington-based Western Wireless recently offloaded a number of assets. It gained 420m euros ($511m) in new shares in Irish telecoms operator Eircom Group Plc, after Eircom acquired Dublin, Ireland-based Meteor Mobile Communications Ltd in late July.

Western Wireless is also the owner of the Austrian mobile operator Tele.ring, which is currently is middle of takeover speculation from Europe’s largest fixed-line carrier Deutsche Telekom AG, which is set to purchase the operator for 1.3bn euros ($1.58bn).

Meanwhile, Alltel has begun its first round of job cuts after the Western Wireless acquisition with the lay-offs of 140 workers, and Alltel has confirmed that more job losses will follow.