AT&T announced the deal ahead of a major wireless conference in Orlando tomorrow. The new entity would be the biggest in the U.S. with 130 million subscribers. The result is that America’s national mobile carrier choices will decrease by one to just three — if the AT&T purchase of Deutsche Telecom AG’s U.S. T-Mobile unit passes antitrust regulatory hurdles. Forget whether you’ll now get service in dead zones in Pacific Palisades. The real issue for Hollywood is that this is now one less place to sell its content. Big Telco is becoming exactly like Big Media by reducing competition: I think they deserve one another.

According to Deadline’s sibling site BGR.com: ”With all of the talk of Sprint and T-Mobile joining up, the AT&T news comes out of the blue — though strategically it makes more sense due to both carriers’ spectrum and network technology. It has been widely reported that Deutsche Telekom was looking to get rid of T-Mobile USA for various reasons. AT&T has also committed to delivering LTE to an additional 46 million people with the T-Mobile acquisition, promising to cover close to 95% of the U.S. population with LTE wireless services in the future. The deal is expected to close, pending regulatory approval, within the next 12 months.”

Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.