Future Of The Cell Phone Industry

So there are currently four large Cell phone carriers to choose from in the United States. AT&T, Verizon, T-mobile and Sprint. T-Mobile just reported the loss of a whopping 470,000 contract customers last quarter which puts them in a bad position to say the least. AT&T has already offered 39 billion for T-Mobile however regulators are considering the deal. On the one hand it would be negative for competition because consumers would have less options when purchasing a cell phone and carrier. On the other hand it may provide for better consumer products if the assets of T-mobile were added to those of AT&T or another suitor in the form of upgraded networks and lower prices (maybe). It should be very interesting to see where the future of the cell phone industry goes when smaller companies get gobbled up by larger ones. What will be the implications if there are only three choices for your cell phone carrier? What if there were only two? I doubt regulators will let that happen but at one time in our history there were several auto-makers, some with better products than the three that emerged to do business today. The article below talks more about T-Mobile's recent contract losses.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-05-06-T-Mobile-ATT_n.htm