Another One Bites the Dust... Bye-bye Nextel

I am actually old enough to remember when telelphones had dials and most of them were rented from the phone company. I do not remember the break-up of AT&T, so I guess I'm actually a fossil though I am obviously on my way. Well, it appears that the cell phone market is attempting to return to the humble roots of JUST ONE. Verizon was formed out a conglomeration of companies. Cingular was formed from a similar conglomeration. Cingular just gobbled up AT&T Wireless. And now, Sprint and NexTel are merging! And the wireless buzz (the gossip, not the nasty sound you hear when you play with the loose antenna in your phone) is that Verizon is considering buying out Sprint, to regain to TOP SPOT in the cellular pantheon.

But hey, in the short term this means a heck of a lot of competition and better deals for customers. But in the long term, it probably means fewer choices and worse customer service. After all, who needs to take care of customers when they have only one other choice?