The Cingular deal can't close a moment too soon for AT&T Wireless. Last quarter, the "network America trusts" lost 400,000 customers. What will be interesting is how next quarter pans out. AT&T Wireless just announced "GSM America," a plan in which GSM customers can call from anywhere in the US without worrying about roaming charges. Intelligently, the company is extending this benefit automatically to existing GSM customers, so they don't have to bog down customer service with expensive and labor-intensive calls.

Still, despite the impression left by AT&T Wireless's ads and PR, only 3 of 21 million customers are on the GSM network. If you call customer service, they tell you that GSM is the future and that the TDMA (old style) network is no longer being improved. Maybe not--but with such a large defection, maintaining the legacy TDMA side has to be a top priority for AT&T Wireless. After such a horrible 1st quarter, it could stand to retain some the 19 million customers using the old technology.