NO ONE knows the answers to these questions, any answers you get are just
speculation, you are best just waiting like the rest of us, to see what
happens..

But I do feel as though no changes can be made until your contract is up,
and than they can tell you, you need to be on a different plan. But.. like I
said this is just speculation..

AT&T customers are not likely to get hurt initially. Like with cable TV
merges, your AT&T infrastructure will likely stay in play or (if technically
feasible) be merged with the local Cingular infrastructure. Signal
availability is likely to be a wash at minimum or possibly improved.

Your contract with AT&T will either need to be honored for the life of the
contract based on your terms, or you should be allowed to cancel without
penalty. (Ouch only if you just bought a phone that locally only works on
the AT&T network). They are likely to offer the terms through the life of
the contract, but not offer the same plans in the future. Remember, it takes
a few years to merge giants like these, and that is the life of most of the
contracts. They don't want to take a bath on all of the phones they handed
out, expecting to recover costs over the life of the contract.

The REAL problem with mergers will be the loss of competition down the road.
Merging two companies may show some improved coverage if the technologies
canbe merged. However, the coverage now is so overlapped that any
improvement will be small. But loss of the competition will mean less deals
and/or promotions. Verizon is already showing symptoms due to its
overwelming coverage advantage; they offer less advnatageous phone deals and
have higher overall pricing. Verizon can because none of the other carriers
truly compete in the main reason for having a mobile phone - mobility!

David