Its a tough call on 1 hand you have two carriers that have almost double the subscribers of the 3th and 4th carriers. So combining 3 and 4 would make it 3 big telcos competing for subscribers. On the other hand the users will loose a realistic choice from 4 to 3.
Personally I wouldn't allow 1 or 2 to buy 3 or 4. But 3 or 4 combining I feel something people could live with.
I agree that this is a tough call. One additional wrinkle is Comcast's impending entrance, as a Verizon reseller that will also be leveraging their own wifi network. Comcast will start out as a small player in cellular, but because they're a big company and will be leveraging a large existing wifi network they may be able to grow relatively quickly.
I am generally not a huge fan of Comcast [1], but in this case I welcome their entrance to the cellular market and look forward to seeing how this shakes things up.
While I agree that going from 4 to 3 isn't a good thing, realistically Sprint has been a viable choice for some time now. Terrible coverage and pathetic data speeds.
