The most recent results from the American Customer Satisfaction Index have been released, which is better news for some companies than it is for others. According to the newest results, Sprint has made significant inroads in customer satisfaction among wireless customers, now sitting at the top of the ACSI rankings for wireless service right next to Verizon -- after having spent some time at the lower end of the rankings courtesy of their Nextel acquisition. A Sprint press release notes their customer satisfaction scores have been trending upward since 2008.

Less happy about these rankings will be AT&T. The company has long been a cellar dweller in such surveys, and the story remains the same here. In fact, both AT&T and T-Mobile have seen a decline in customer satisfaction as AT&T tries to justify their planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. AT&T's not only at the bottom of the rankings, they saw their lowest rankings since 2006 in this report.

"It is common to find a reduction in customer satisfaction after mergers, but it is rare for customer satisfaction to drop ahead of a merger," says ACSI founder Claes Fornell. "Assuming the deal is approved, it remains to be seen if a much larger AT&T can regain the strength of its customer relationships."

AT&T U-Verse TV service has traditionally fared much better in the ACSI's subscription television services rankings, but there too AT&T has taken a hit -- their customer satisfaction ranking for U-Verse TV dropping 5.6%.

"Customer complaints about picture quality, particularly for HD channels, have increased, as AT&T grapples with bandwidth challenges across several of its telecommunications services," says the firm. Dish Network somehow managed to match AT&T's sizable drop, while rival DirecTV saw slight gains. Verizon's FiOS TV service saw a slight drop, but remains the highest ranked TV service.

On the phone front, scores for the ACSI's fixed line telephone rankings declined overall as "telecommunications companies devote fewer resources to the shrinking fixed-line telephone business," says the ACSI. There Qwest (now CenturyLink) and Cox saw the highest scores, while Comcast and CenturyLink saw the lowest.

The entire ACSI rankings for all industries can be found here. The ACSI also ranks government agencies, and it's always fun to compare how the IRS is doing when compared to your favorite (or least favorite) company.