CTIA WIRELESS officially begins tomorrow, but prior to the show's start, a major news story has already hit the wires: AT&T is forking over $39 billion to acquire competitor T-Mobile.

The deal gives AT&T the designation of being the U.S.'s largest wireless carrier with 130 million subscribers: it's 96 million plus T-Mobile's 34 million. Verizon reportedly had 94.1 subscribers at the end of 2010; fairly in line with AT&T's previous figure. But with this acquisition, AT&T will find itself catapulting ahead of the competition.

Should wireless customers in the U.S. be worried? After all, us Canadians know all too well what can happen when the market is dominated by just a few players. With the issue has been hotly debated over the years, it's a common belief that Canadians pay among the highest, if not the highest, for wireless services when compared to other developed nations. The U.S. numbers aren't anything to write home about either. With this move, might we see the competitive situation get worse? Or will this result in better deals for the consumer?

AT&T is quite to promise that the competitive landscape for which the U.S. is known will remain in tact. But how the two brands will be managed in terms of handset offerings, service pricing, and target markets going forward remains to be seen.

More important than the issue is pricing and handset availability, however, is that U.S. carrier services are known among consumers for being plagued by spotty coverage, dropped calls, and generally bad service areas. With AT&T being able to capitalize on T-Mobile's cell sites, this will not only expand its network coverage, but also help improve it in areas where service was already available. And this is a good thing for customers of both brands, leading to greater service reliability. While Canadians tend to pay more for our services, we also have greater coverage in vast spaces of our great country where wireless services wouldn't be expected to function as seamlessly as they do.

It's a major move stateside, nevertheless, and one that will be a hot water cooler topic on the CTIA show floor. It also sets the tone of many changes to come in wireless this year; from faster 4G networks, to dealing with ever-increasing bandwidth usage as consumers to do everything from play image-intensive games to watching video on their smartphones and 3G/4G-enabled tablets.

As for Canada, while the carrier landscape is still dominated by our "Big Three" (Bell, Rogers, and Telus), we continue to put faith in new carriers like Mobilicity, Public Mobile, Videtron, and WIND Mobile. There have been positive changes in the market here since these new players emerged, including better service deals for consumers, lower handset prices, and the removal of some of those pesky nickel and diming fees. So the future north of the border is bright.

Meanwhile in the U.S., Verizon, can you hear them now? The distinct sound of that T-Mobile tune is ringing louder and louder.

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