AT&T bought T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion so there are now only three major mobile carriers in the US – AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Both carriers use the same technologies: GSM, HSPA+ and LTE. AT&T Mobile will become a monopoly for GSM cellular services in the US.
AT&T will become the largest US cellular carrier surpassing Verizon by a nice margin based on an estimated number of subscribers at Verizon as 94 million. Purchasing T-Mobile will add about 34 million subscribers to AT&T’s 96 million creating a subscriber base of approximately 130 million for the combined carrier.