Some folks are looking at the problems that Sprint/Nextel had monetizing their “merger of equals” several years ago. The Wall Street Journal have taken a brief look at this and the huge losses over the lifetime of the merger. I doubt that AT&T or Verizon will acquire Sprint. You may recall that MCI/Worldcom tried to acquire Sprint and was rebuffed by regulators. Possible acquisitions could come from anyone from ISPs to other telcos. This could range from Cogent to Level3 or Qwest. Personally I had always wondered how they would merge two networks that used different technologies for a win. Nextel had higher revenue per subscriber due to their two-way feature, but Sprint hasn’t had any compelling products in recent years as AT&T(Cingular) launched the iPhone, and others attempt to compete.