We're kicking off the latest edition of the North American Carrier Scorecard by handing out our highest grade yet.

    Each quarter, Light Reading publishes scorecards on the world's most influential publicly held carriers, giving them a grade of A through F based on their financial and business performance. Our previous North American carrier scorecard is right here: Carrier Scorecard: Ma Bell's Metamorphosis.

    Receiving a grade of A is tough. You need to show strong growth across the board and obvious momentum for the future.

    We had been lenient with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ - message board) in previous quarters because we understood that its profits and margins were down due to the enormous cost of FiOS, and it's hard to discredit a company for making a huge investment in its future.

    Now, with net income on the rise again and the continued steady growth in revenue, it seems only appropriate to give Verizon the first-ever grade in the A range. Its FiOS service roared past the 1 million mark in Internet subscribers and just inched past half a million TV subscribers. The company's stock is now trading near its 52-week high and outperformed the S&P 500 in the second quarter by more than 4 percent.

    There is, however, some risk to consider in future quarters. Much of Verizon's strength came from wireless, and with AT&T launching the iPhone we'll see if it can hold onto its customers while Apple and AT&T ramp up the marketing.

    We're still waiting 'til 2008 before we can really make sense of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T - message board)'s quarterly performance. By then, its growth numbers won't be inflated by the fact that it's including a whole other company's worth of revenues and earnings this year that it wasn't counting last year.

    U-verse is expanding its subscriber base; it now has 51,000, compared to 3,000 at the end of last year, and if the company hits its target of doing 10,000 installations per week by the end of this year, then it'll quiet some of its skeptics.