Could AT&T and Verizon End Up Owning the U.S. Wireless Market?

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this, but as Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett said in a recent MocoNews report, size matters in the wireless industry.

Moffett called the current market a “zero sum game,” in which the richest companies—Verizon Wireless and AT&T—were pulling ahead of the pack by stealing share from their smaller rivals, as Dow Jones reports. “There simply isn’t enough growth left in the market to support all the players,” Moffett said.

We’ve already seen Verizon gobble up Alltel (the nation’s fifth largest carrier) for $28 billion. Sprint’s struggles are now legendary, and T-Mobile is doing well but could potentially end up ripe for a takeover. Moffett reports that 84 percent of the growth in the industry is coming entirely from Verizon and AT&T at this point.

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