> By buying TMO, they would get an instantaneous
> coverage increase and instantaneous capability
> increase.
Not really. Most of the coverage AT&T is lacking and proposed to build out to expand from 8x% to 9x% coverage is in rural areas where T-Mobile's network is even weaker than AT&T's. In other words, there are very few places where T-Mobile has coverage and AT&T doesn't already; most of the new coverage they'd get in this deal is redundant.
Beyond that, we're primarily talking about LTE coverage. That would require significant additional investment even if you added T-Mobile's (GSM/UMTS/HSPA+) infrastructure to the mix.
