NEW YORK (AP) – Verizon Communications Inc. said Monday its earnings grew 5 percent in the first quarter, boosted by its acquisition of Alltel Corp. and strong demand for its wireless, Internet and TV services.

Verizon, which is the second-largest U.S. telecommunications provider, earned $3.21 billion, or 58 cents per share, compared with $3.05 billion, or 57 cents per share, a year ago.

Excluding charges related to its acquisition of Alltel, Verizon earned 63 cents per share – 4 cents higher than analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected.

Revenue rose almost 12 percent to $26.6 billion. That topped Wall Street’s expectations of $26.3 billion in revenue.

Revenue from Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture with Vodafone Group PLC of Britain, rose 30 percent to $15.1 billion.

During the quarter, Verizon Wireless added 1.3 million net customers – more than the 1.2 million rival AT&T Inc. reported last week and the 1.18 million that analysts were expecting.

Verizon also brought in 13.2 million customers from the $5.9 billion acquisition of Alltel, which closed in January. Verizon Wireless ended the period with 86.6 million wireless customers.

“Verizon, like AT&T, is taking a huge amount of share from the weaker wireless players and is seeing a real flowering of new business in the wireless data market,” said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.

On the other side of the business, Verizon, like its peers, has been losing landline subscribers to competition from cell phones, Internet calling and phone service from cable TV companies.

Wireline revenue, which includes Verizon’s local-phone business and the services it sells to corporate and government customers, fell 3.8 percent to $11.6 billion.

The number of business access lines fell 5.5 percent to 14.7 million. And the number of residential access lines in service fell even further, dropping 12.5 percent to 20.3 million.

The company said it ended the quarter with 8.9 million high-speed Internet customers, up 8 percent from last year. Subscribers to its FiOS fiber-optic Internet service rose more than 55 percent to 2.8 million, while FiOS TV service subscribers rose 84 percent to 2.2 million.

“People are disconnecting wirelines, the telcos are losing share to the cable and broadband market,” Moffett said. Verizon is “spending money as fast as they can to build FiOS, but it’s not clear that they can shovel fast enough to fill the hole.”

Verizon shares fell 46 cents, or 1.5 percent, to close at $30.54 Monday.