As Yogi Berra says, its like deja vu all over again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Cingular and AT&T Wireless are in serious merger talks, and are likely to spark off a massive wave of consolidation in the wireless industry. Expectedly all parties have declined to comment. The same news was reported by the same paper a month ago, leading to a ton of headlines and speculation.

The news should not come as a surprise, because Cingular and AT&T Wireless have been hit hard by the local number portability and have seen users bail out of their lousy networks. The story is pretty sketchy on details. Readers of my weblog and my work in Business 2.0 are quite familiar with this bit of news already. Last summer we predicted that this could be one of the likely mergers in the wireless business. Later, my story on wireless number portability repeated the argument. I have been privy to some rumors about the likelihood of the deal. A wrinkle in the ointment could be T-Mobile which could make a play for one or the other. Most related stories on Wireless Consolidation & Wireless Number Portability are here.

Additional Views are here on the new Business 2.0 Blog.