If it passes muster with U.S. regulators, the combined company will have about 129 million subscribers, 34 million of them from T-Mobile. That compares to Verizon’s 94 million and Sprint Nextel’s 50 million.

MERGER MANIA:  

MORE AT&T NEWS:

AT&T and T-Mobile have the same underlying cellular network infrastructure, GSM, and both are heading toward the next phase: .   specifically says the merger of the two networks will let it deploy LTE more aggressively across the U.S. The deal has been approved by the boards of directors of AT&T and T-Mobile’s German parent, Deutsche Telekom.  

The transaction will be mainly cash: about $25 million, with the balance in AT&T stock. T-Mobile USA’s parent, Deutsche Telekom, will reportedly take an 8% ownership stake in AT&T as a result. AT&T is getting T-Mobile for considerably less than the nearly $51 billion paid by Deutsche Telekom a decade ago, in 2001.