AT&T announced today that it gained 289,000 net new post-paid subscribers during the latest quarter. Those are the customers that pay at the end of the month. AT&T also tacked on 466,000 net new pre-paid accounts during the quarter. That was the best pre-paid net new addition figure for AT&T in eight years. All Cricket subscribers now use AT&T’s network. The carrier did report the addition of 1 million connected cars, giving it a total of 2.5 million connected autos. Overall, 1.6 million new connected devices were added to the carrier’s network during Q3.

AT&T remains the nation’s second largest carrier. While it still trails Verizon at the top, it is now looking at T-Mobile in the rear-view mirror instead of Sprint. In August, the hard-charging un-carrier leapfrogged over Sprint to become the nation’s third largest carrier. During the quarter, AT&T says that it picked up 1 million net new branded smartphones to its base. Smartphones were responsible for 90% of new phone additions.

The carrier noticed a slowdown in smartphone upgrades, which means that the average smartphone life is growing longer. As more people turn to AT&T Next, 80% of new smartphones added to the AT&T network came from the installment plan, or from subscribers bringing their own handsets to their AT&T account. That means that subsidized smartphone sales have been declining sharply. For the quarter, postpaid churn was 1.16%, which works out to 1.06% for 2015 to date.

source: AT&T