When it comes to revenue and capital expenditures, NTT still ruled the telecom service provider roost worldwide last year, according a recent study.

Infonetics Research’s report said the world’s top-three  service providers in 2012 by revenue were, in order, NTT, AT&T and Verizon while Comcast was the only pure cable operator among the top-10 revenue generators.

“NTT, which passed AT&T as the top revenue-generating service provider in 2011, remains the number-one service provider in the world in terms of revenue and capital expenditures, and in 2012 it became the leader in terms of operating expenses as well,” said Maria Zeppetella, market analyst manager at Infonetics Research and lead analyst on the report. “Telefónica Group leads among European operators in terms of CAPEX, revenue and OPEX.”

When measuring just CAPEX, the top three service providers on the list were NTT, China Mobile and AT&T. From a geographic vantage point, China dominated the spending with three providers in the top six.

The top independent wireless provider by revenue was China Mobile, with sales of almost $89 billion last year.

On the customer front, LTE subscribers were the fastest-growing segment compared to all other technologies.