At 23 Jul 2008 11:32:43 -0700 Mark Crispin wrote:

> The pending acquisition of Alltel will add 13 million subscribers to
> Verizon, putting it ahead of AT&T, just as AT&T's acquisition of
> Dobson Cellular One last year put AT&T ahead of Verizon.


Didn't Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless put it ahead of Verizon a
few years ago? The Dobson acquisition was only a few million customers.

Although I really don't know why anyone cares about the "most subscribers"
total anyway. It's not like any of these carriers grew to these numbers
"naturally"- both AT&T and Verizon are amalgams of smaller regional
carriers created through mergers and acquisitions, Sprint acquired Nextel,
and T-Mobile was a bunch of smaller GSM carriers.

We're not talking about ground-up expansions of once small mom-n-pop
businesses acheiving national dominance one customer or store at a time
like Starbucks, McDonald's or Wal-Mart! Any company can become "biggest"
in their market via mergers and acquisitions...