The only real competition is in cell service and Internet. Landline long-distance is a dying industry (and can be defeated by dial-arounds anyway... remember the 10-10-321 ads?).

For cell service, there's still the same number of competitors as before, Cingular just got brought back into the AT&T fold.

For Internet there's no real difference either--it's still the local monopoly telecom versus the cable companies, and (soon) long-distance WiFi competitors. This doesn't affect that battle either.

The only thing I can think of it affecting would be long-distance trunk line market, but I think that's still vastly over-built and divided (among Sprint, the remnants of MCI, Verizon, etc).

Some how they manage to $$convince$$ FCC dudes that not having to compete is important to the health of the industry and thus better for the consumer.