Part of the "4G" confusion was started by T-Mobile, and it's frustrating as it forced AT&T to also lie about 4G, and I'm hearing it's spreading to European companies too. Just a shame the ITU didn't crack down on it, but they never did with fake 3G either.

As for the overall merger, I share the concerns over less competition, but not sure it matters much here in the US anyhow. We never have had great mobile competition, with various "standards" dividing up the market. It hasn't been really feasible to buy a phone, then buy a SIM and stay on the leading edge.

Seeing that it will probably happen, any petitioning I do to the FCC will be concentrated on holding AT&T to their agreement of spreading LTE to rural areas. Telecoms have made claims of wanting to spread broadband before, and even were allowed to collect an extra "tax" to it. The government never held the companies accountable, and that money disappeared. The FCC did have a little more success in mandating $10 DSL for a little while as a condition of the Bell South merger.

For now, AT&T and T-Mobile must continue to operate as separate companies. The announcement was only the beginning of a long regulatory process, and there remains the possibility it won't happen. Any plans on what to do with phones or existing customers can't be put into action until the merger is done. Back when the Compaq HP merger was announced, a new company was formed to hammer out all the merger details. They did so in a clean room style, where all they work they did would be destroyed if the merger fell apart. It included all the plans down to new org charts and such, but only a few people in HP and Compaq were privy to the information. Once the merger officially closed, that company was also merged in and began directing the changes.