Creating the tenth independent company to devolve from the original telecom behemoth, AT&T today completed the spinoff of its wireless arm, known now as AT&T Wireless.

The new company will be the largest American independent wireless firm, with 15.7 million subscribers and 2000 revenue of $10.4 billion.

AT&T Wireless is one of four entities that's being carved out of AT&T, the others being a Broadband company, Business services and Consumer long distance. Of the four AT&T entities, this one has - from a financial perspective - the brightest future because of "a fast-growing customer base and the expected strong demand for next-generation advanced wireless services," in the words of one financial analyst's report.

This is perhaps wishful thinking - not that it's the brightest star of the four, but that it may be a misreading of the potential of US-based consumers to eat (and pay for) advanced services.

AT&T Wireless emphasized their commitment to these services in its debut today, pointing out that it has a schedule for deploying the most-widely accepted next generation, or 3G technology - the global-standard known as UMTS. This will follow its rollout of GSM/GPRS, or 2.5G technology, this year and next.

AT&T Wireless noted that it currently has the spectrum capacity it needs to effectively execute its planned migration to GSM. And, with partners and affiliates, they say they have enough spectrum capacity to take the company all the way to full 3G (UMTS) in more than 70 of the top US markets.

It would not be at all surprising to see it merged/bought/integrated somehow into one or another of the major players sometime within the next year. Because in this business, bigger is definitely better.

Anyway, the news of the spinoff (which is really not news, since we knew it was going to happen today at 9 am ET), is being drowned out by the surprise talk of Comcast trying to buy one of the other AT&T children, AT&T Broadband. Perhaps it's better this way, with fewer people paying attention to the wireless entity, it might have a few days grace to get under way.