Actually Cingular is number 1 now because of the buying of AT&T. News item
Cingular, currently the nation's No. 2 cellular service provider, is paying about a 27 percent premium to shareholders of AT&T Wireless, the nation's No. 3 wireless phone provider. Vodafone, which had recently raised its offer to $38 billion, dropped out of the bidding Tuesday. The deal would make Cingular the largest wireless carrier, ahead of Verizon Wireless, with about 46 million subscribers.
Both Cingular and AT&T Wireless have networks that run on the global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard, the same standard that most networks in Europe are run on.