Verizon reported strong earnings and revenue growth this morning, based in large part on Verizon Wireless’ continued strong performance. The company posted second-quarter earnings of $1.7 billion—or 58 cents per share—up from 55 cents per share in the second quarter of 2006. Last year’s number comprises revenues from operations the company has since spun off, including its Yellow Pages directory business. Discounting revenue from those operations, the 2006 figure was 43 cents per share, indicating solid growth for Verizon.

The company also hit industry analyst expectations, which were 58 cents per share, according to Thomson Financial.

Separately, Verizon announced this morning it is acquiring Rural Cellular Corp., which provides cell phone service to 716,000 subscribers in 15 states under the Unicel brand, for $757 million, or $45 per share. The acquisition comes with about $1.9 billion in debt, Verizon said, but will save Verizon Wireless about $1 billion in roaming fees and operations expenses. The company will have to convert some of Rural Cellular’s current customers from GSM technology to the CDMA technology that Verizon uses, but it said it will maintain the existing GSM network to provide roaming to other carriers’ customers.

Verizon Wireless was already expanding, adding 1.3 million total net customer additions, after resale reductions were calculated for a total of 60.1 million retail customers—an increase of 14.3%, and a total of 62.1 million total customers. The company also touted what it called industry-low churn rates of 1.08% and 0.85% retail post-paid. Verizon Wireless also claimed to be the largest U.S. wireless company based on total revenues, which were up 17.1%, as well as data revenues, which climbed 70.3%, an EBITDA of 45.8% and a retain service average revenue per user that rose 3%.

The company added 167,000 net new FiOS TV customers in the quarter for a total of 515,000 FiOS TV customers, as well as 288,000 new broadband connections in the quarter including 203,000 net new FiOS Internet customers, for a total of 1.1 million.

Verizon said it saw a 3.4% increase in revenues in its legacy consumer market, which was more than double its rate of growth in the first quarter. At Verizon Business adjusted revenues were up 2.4% and revenues from strategic services—IP and managed services—were up 25.5%. Data revenues across the wireline business, which includes Verizon Telecom and Verizon Business, were up 11.6% to $4.4 billion, reflecting increasing revenues from consumer broadband services such as DSL and FiOS, and from wholesale data transport and the sales of business data services, the company said.