The American mobile telecommunications community was rocked this week by word that AT&T had entered into a definitive agreement to buy German-owned T-Mobile to the tune of $39 billion dollars. When word about the purchase came down this week, we had two questions: First, will Catherine Zeta Jones and Luke Wilson work together, or be forced to battle it out to see who gets to keep the B-list celebrity spokesperson gig after the merger goes through? Second, and more importantly, will T-mobile customers have a chance to get their hands on an iPhone?

Our Answer: Yes, but not in anything close to a timely fashion.

It seems like offering Apple's iconic smartphone to current T-Mobile customers would be simple enough. After all, both AT&T and T-Mobile are rocking a GSM network. Shouldn't it just be a simple matter of unlocking iPhones currently set to run under the AT&T network? Well yes, it should - but it isn't. To understand why, it's best to forget about whether or not the iPhone is capable of operating on a given network, and instead take a look at those networks themselves.

One of the most common gripes about AT&T is their lousy cellular coverage, especially in major centers like New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. According to AT&T CEO Operations John Stankey, once the merger is complete these areas, which have a wicked high concentration of AT&T customers, stand to gain upwards of 45% increase of cell sites. Add to that the additional national cellular spectrum T-Mobile brings to the party and you've got the makings of a noticeable improvement to the quality of service.

This is great news for current, data hungry AT&T customers. With the telecom maneuvering into a position where they can finally fulfill the promise of a less congested, more capable cellular network, we think it's unlikely that AT&T will offer a data-slurping handset up to T-Mobile customers as soon as possible. Doing so, would only add to their newly combined network's load, thus negating any of the benefits that their long-term customers might gain from it.

Aside from the tech side of things, we have to consider the regulatory and contractual red tape mixed up this multibillion dollar merger as well. AT&T estimates that it could take upwards of a year before the FCC puts their seal of approval on T-Mobile's acquisition. Beyond that, the company will also have to transition with all of T-Mobile's current customers -- many of which holding multi-year contracts -- over to AT&T. That's going to take some time as well.

However, this isn't to say that T-Mobile customers won't see the iPhone at some point down the road. Once the merger ballyhoo comes to an end, it will be in AT&T's best interest to offer the iPhone to their T-Mobile supplicants. After all, what mega-corporation doesn't want to see higher profits? Until that day comes, we're sorry to say that we think you'll all just have to wait. That wait may come to an end if the next iPhone moves on to become a 4G handset, leaving AT&T's current 3G infrastructure wide open to T-Mobile customers to enjoy slightly older, slighty slower iPhone hardware.

Hey, it could happen. After all, AT&T's already offering the 3GS for a wicked low price. It's well within the scope of reason to believe that the iPhone 4 will become yesterday's hotness at some point too. Until then, we can at least look forward to those Zeta-Jones and Wilson commercials. Oh, the adventures that pair are going to have!

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