More than half a million persons joined Verizon Communications Inc. as subscribers in the last quarter, which indicates the company's robustness even before the launch of the iPhone scheduled for February.

Analysts had expected to enroll 650,000 subscribers but the actual numbers were about 872,000 for the contract based plans. These plans based on contracts are the most lucrative for the company, and Verizon has confirmed that 75 percent of these subscribers went in for smart phones that have added fees for data.