On Thursday, Reuters reported that Sprint has agreed to purchase competing carrier T-Mobile for about a $32 billion price tag.
In terms of both wireless subscribers and data revenue, Sprint and T-Mobile (the third- and fourth-largest carriers, respectively) would still combine to be just the third-largest carrier in the U.S.
BI Intelligence put together the chart below to show that combined, Sprint and T-Mobile have just over 85 million subscribers. That's about 20% fewer than the 102 million held by second-place AT&T.
Right now, AT&T is more than double the size of Sprint alone.
The merger could help a combined T-Mobile-Sprint become more competitive in the top-heavy market and would also give the merged company greater leverage in spectrum auctions.