It's going to be a tough time for cellular service providers coming up in a few years. With companies like T-Mobile already suffering from unprofitability, just imagine the impeding bloodbath when usage skyrockets because we all find great, high-bandwidth services that we can enjoy using on our smart phones, and regulations obstruct service providers from charging a fair price for each service, insisting that all services must cost the same.
This confluence of consumer demand radically increasing, and impediments put in place to support any reasonable expectation of acceptable profitability, could decimate the industry, causing spurious failure of smaller providers and therefore lots of disruptions for consumers. A deal like this would ensure that AT&T could stay above the fray and provide for its customers a safe-haven from the miasma (albeit a bit more costly).
So that's the quandary: T-Mobile is dead; we know that. If AT&T doesn't buy them, then someone else will, or they'll be the first to go under when the crunch hits. Consumers want stability but they also want low prices, and the two are absolutely incompatible with each other. You can look at any number of industries, which have gone through a similar time, to see how this will eventually play out, no matter what anyone does. People should have a choice: There should be enough (i.e., at least two) service providers big and strong enough to offer stability to consumers who want stability more than anything else. And then there will always be smaller service providers, fly-by-nights, perhaps, to offer the low-cost services, though without the benefits of the stability that the high-grade providers provide.
