What was the postpaid handset net addition for the second quarter of 2019 
tion project will use various technologies, including 4x4 MIMO, LAA, 256-QAM and LTE M to bring LTE advanced features to our customers. These features improve coverage, throughput and capacity of the network. The modernization will support and utilize our existing low-band and mid-band AWS PCS spectrum holdings. The equipment being deployed is an enabler for supporting future 5G bands too.
As a reminder, we will start the deployment in our largest markets and look to commercially launch these services and 5G in those markets in 2020. Like with other technology evolutions, we are pacing these investments so we are ready when our customers are ready. This multi-year approach has served us well with previous generation technology deployments such as VoLTE, 4G and 3G. The work involved includes replacing the base stations with software upgradable base bands; new 5G features can be incorporated with simply a software upgrade rather than a hardware-upgrade. Moving the radios up to the top of the tower, this improves coverage, and software upgrades to the core of our network.
We are pleased with our progress to-date, our infrastructure vendors thus far are meeting our hardware delivery needs. We have started the tower work required to support the new antennas and coax lines at the cell sites, and we are making good progress upgrading the key components of the network core. By the way, you can't have a 5G offering without a device, and we are working very hard with our major handset partners to ensure we have 5G devices to go with our 5G commercial launches.
Now, I will turn the call over to Steve Campbell. Steve?
Steve Campbell -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Mike and good morning everyone. I want to talk first about postpaid handset connections shown on Slide 8.
Postpaid handset gross additions for the second quarter were 102,000, down from 111,000 a year ago. Ken talked about the factors influencing these results in his comments earlier. Postpaid handset net additions for the second quarter were negative 11,000; down from 5,000 last year, driven by the decline in gross additions and slightly higher churn. On a sequential basis, handset gross and net additions were both about the same. We continue to have existing handset customers upgrading from feature phones to smartphones. Including the upgrades total smartphone connections increased by 10,000 during the second quarter, and by 104,000 over the course of the past year; that helps to drive more service revenue given that ARPU for a smartphone is about $22 more than ARPU for a featured.
Next, I want to comment on the postpaid churn rate shown on Slide 9. Postpaid handset churn depicted by the blue bars was 0.97% for the second quarter of 2018, with only small variations compared with the year earlier and sequential quarter results. In fact, handset churn has been right at/or below 1% for several consecutive quarters, which is indicative of high customer satisfaction. Total postpaid churn combining handsets and connected devices also has been consistently low over the period shown; it was 1.23% for the second quarter and has been trending down slightly for the past couple of quarters.
Now let's turn to the financial results. Total operating revenues for the second quarter were $973 million, essentially flat year-over-year. Retail service revenues increased by 2% year-over-year to $662 million; the increase was due largely to higher average revenue per user which I'll cover in more detail on the next slide. Inbound roaming revenue was $44 million; that was an increase of 13% year-over-year driven by higher data volume. Equipment sales revenues decreased by $17 million or about 7% year-over-year; this was driven by a decrease in the number of devices sold. The impact of reduced volume was partly offset by an increase in the average revenue per device sold. We're continuing to see that customers are holding on to their devices for increasingly longer periods driving the number of device transactions lower. Just as we said last quarter, equipment
tion project will use various technologies, including 4x4 MIMO, LAA, 256-QAM and LTE M to bring LTE advanced features to our customers. These features improve coverage, throughput and capacity of the network. The modernization will support and utilize our existing low-band and mid-band AWS PCS spectrum holdings. The equipment being deployed is an enabler for supporting future 5G bands too.
As a reminder, we will start the deployment in our largest markets and look to commercially launch these services and 5G in those markets in 2020. Like with other technology evolutions, we are pacing these investments so we are ready when our customers are ready. This multi-year approach has served us well with previous generation technology deployments such as VoLTE, 4G and 3G. The work involved includes replacing the base stations with software upgradable base bands; new 5G features can be incorporated with simply a software upgrade rather than a hardware-upgrade. Moving the radios up to the top of the tower, this improves coverage, and software upgrades to the core of our network.
We are pleased with our progress to-date, our infrastructure vendors thus far are meeting our hardware delivery needs. We have started the tower work required to support the new antennas and coax lines at the cell sites, and we are making good progress upgrading the key components of the network core. By the way, you can't have a 5G offering without a device, and we are working very hard with our major handset partners to ensure we have 5G devices to go with our 5G commercial launches.
Now, I will turn the call over to Steve Campbell. Steve?
Steve Campbell -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Mike and good morning everyone. I want to talk first about postpaid handset connections shown on Slide 8.
 Postpaid handset gross additions for the second quarter were 102,000, down from 111,000 a year ago. Ken talked about the factors influencing these results in his comments earlier. Postpaid handset net additions for the second quarter were negative 11,000; down from 5,000 last year, driven by the decline in gross additions and slightly higher churn. On a sequential basis, handset gross and net additions were both about the same. We continue to have existing handset customers upgrading from feature phones to smartphones. Including the upgrades total smartphone connections increased by 10,000 during the second quarter, and by 104,000 over the course of the past year; that helps to drive more service revenue given that ARPU for a smartphone is about $22 more than ARPU for a featured.
Next, I want to comment on the postpaid churn rate shown on Slide 9. Postpaid handset churn depicted by the blue bars was 0.97% for the second quarter of 2018, with only small variations compared with the year earlier and sequential quarter results. In fact, handset churn has been right at/or below 1% for several consecutive quarters, which is indicative of high customer satisfaction. Total postpaid churn combining handsets and connected devices also has been consistently low over the period shown; it was 1.23% for the second quarter and has been trending down slightly for the past couple of quarters.
Now let's turn to the financial results. Total operating revenues for the second quarter were $973 million, essentially flat year-over-year. Retail service revenues increased by 2% year-over-year to $662 million; the increase was due largely to higher average revenue per user which I'll cover in more detail on the next slide. Inbound roaming revenue was $44 million; that was an increase of 13% year-over-year driven by higher data volume. Equipment sales revenues decreased by $17 million or about 7% year-over-year; this was driven by a decrease in the number of devices sold. The impact of reduced volume was partly offset by an increase in the average revenue per device sold. We're continuing to see that customers are holding on to their devices for increasingly longer periods driving the number of device transactions lower. Just as we said last quarter, equipment