AT&T talks about boosting services upon acquiring T-Mobile– but competitors and many other companies just don’t see it that way. The second largest mobile company received numerous complains because of its inability to suffice as a mobile broadband infrastructure, and acquiring the 4th largest mobile network in the US seems to be the easiest way out. However, for companies like Sprint, this move marks the demise of strong competition, stripping T-Mobile of its independence being the 4th largest network, and causing Sprint to lag behind, as AT&T is about to supersize, about 3 times the size of Sprint. Clearly, this path will lead to duopoly, ergo, Verizon-AT&T competition.

The acquisition will grant Deustche Telecom, the company behind T-Mobile, $25 million spot cash and $14 billion worth of stocks which is 8 percent stake in AT&T. While the deal was approved by both AT&T and T-Mobile board, it will still have to go through the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The mobile company claims this to be a good opportunity to boost their services, adhering to the vision of FCC and President Obama to connect “every part of America to the digital age.” It will span across 95 percent of the US demographic, catering 46.5 million more American consumers. However, the deal was predicted to increase the price of plans which is not very good for users.

‘This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation’s future. It will improve network quality, and it will bring advanced LTE capabilities to more than 294 million people. Mobile broadband networks drive economic opportunity everywhere, and they enable the expanding high-tech ecosystem that includes device makers, cloud and content providers, app developers, customers, and more. During the past few years, America’s high-tech industry has delivered innovation at unprecedented speed, and this combination will accelerate its continued growth,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO.

T-Mobile’s spectrum and cell infrastructure will highly complement AT&T’s 700MHz licenses, transforming AT&T from a mobile data network to LTE, and will be in position to scale the growing number of users and mobile devices. Their traffic is expected to boost with the same magnitude over the past 4 years, which was reported to be over 8,000 percent.

Undoubtedly, this acquisition is going to cripple Sprint. It negotiated T-Mobile to invest in Clearwire to improve its Mobile WiMAX network, but the deal T-Mobile struck with AT&T will make this impossible. Comcast was reported to be interested in partnering with AT&T but the company said it has no interest about the wireless business, except MVNO. There’s also LightSquared who envisioned T-Mobile being its national partner and potential investor. In addition, Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCC) is also reacting to the move being T-Mobile’s Call Center Center as its 4th largest private employer.

“Well, certainly we’re looking at that with interest. Certainly we’re very interested in making sure that that employer maintains their presence in Redmond. We’ve not heard anything contrary to that thus far. It’s something we’re going to keep an eye on,” said Roger Lee from EDCO.

It has also caused the likes of Roger Altman, leader of Evercore Partners Inc., to climb up the ladder as a prominent face when it comes to mergers and acquistions, having able to fix this deal which will possibly mark the largest acquistion in the US this year if approved. Even with the acquisition and drift to LTE, 3G is still expected to rule the US mobile broadband market for sometime.