If the game proves to be popular, it will drive even more data traffic and revenue back to the cellular carriers.

Compared to this, keeping your phone number when you switch cellular carriers is a vanity.

It also depends on how aggressively cellular carriers want to promote their service plans.

"The compensation for existing cellular carriers is that the whole pie will be so much bigger," he said in a recent report.

All cellular carriers offer some type of e-mail service, sometimes for an extra fee.

The data revenue for American cellular carriers grew at an annual rate of more than 70 percent in the first half of last year.

But it would still need to rely on the cellular carriers.

Until a few years ago, almost every American metropolitan market had only two cellular carriers.

It was the largest independent non-wireline cellular carrier in the 1990s.

There was concern among the cellular carriers' aspiring rivals, too.