While latching onto Sprint's wireless network might plug a glaring gap in AT&T's consumer and business offerings, industry experts are questioning whether Sprint gets enough out of the deal.

AT&T will offer customers mobile services that will be bundled with its existing local, long-distance voice and data services over Sprint's wireless network. The two companies last week inked a five-year, non-exclusive contract. Financial details were not divulged.

The arrangement will let AT&T become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which the carrier says gives it more operational control than simply reselling services. AT&T will provide customer service, billing and landline network support. All wireless long-distance voice calls will be handed off to AT&T's landline network with the exception of any call destined for the Sprint PCS network.

The telecom giant has not offered wireless service since it divested AT&T Wireless in 2001.

But one analyst wonders if Sprint made a mistake in embracing a competitor.

"How many times can Sprint [sell] itself out . . . and still succeed?" asks Bob Egan, president of consulting firm Mobile Competency. AT&T is Sprint's biggest competitor for business users, and it just handed them the keys to its one differentiator, its wireless network, he says.

Egan points out that Qwest and Virgin Mobile both operate their wireless businesses off of Sprint's network as MVNOs.

But if not Sprint it would have been another provider teaming with AT&T. Recently AT&T has been reselling AT&T Wireless services to customers in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Baltimore; Indianapolis; San Diego and Tampa, Fla., but only on a trial basis. An AT&T spokesman says the carrier is using this information to formulate how it will introduce wireless services to its base of about 35 million consumer and 3 million business customers.

But before the carrier starts rolling out new product offerings it is waiting out Cingular Wireless' $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless. "There are market restrictions and other considerations that ... preclude [AT&T] from competing against AT&T Wireless with an AT&T-branded offer," until after the deal closes sometime in the fourth quarter, the spokesman says.

The AT&T Wireless brand name will become exclusive property of AT&T six months after the deal closes, although AT&T says it is premature to say it will use that brand.