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Cowen & Co.’s Colby Synesael today takes the temperature of the U.S. wireless industry, one of his regular quarterly surveys, and finds that things are getting tougher for industry as the “Big Four” — T-Mobile U.S. (TMUS), Verizon Communications (VZ), Sprint (S), and AT&T (T) — all move to all-you-can-eat wireless plans.

The “unlimited” plans, of which all four finally coalesced for the first time in Q1, has “not been pretty,” writes Synesael:

The first quarter of Unlimited for all four carriers left much to be desired. Both AT&T and Verizon incurred postpaid losses for the first time on record, a trend that could continue as the tablet story seems to be on life support. Verizon specifically had its worst quarter in recent memory with a lackluster performance on nearly all sub metrics. Even T-Mobile’s guidance included a “less great” postpaid net add increase of +250K (vs. +500K this time last year). Combined with continued pricing pressure, AT&T and Verizon are pivoting to new avenues of growth such as Mexico, content, media, IoT, and 5G, all of which can’t come soon enough.

Because things are so ugly, AT&T and Verizon and the others are now looking past basic wireless, to “5G,” the next bump up in capabilities from today’s LTE, he writes:

The 5G story has reached fever pitch, dominating the conversations at industry and investor conferences, including most recently WIA and our own investor conference. When 5G rollout is fully completed, AT&T’s John Donovan says it will be the ultimate technology (perhaps “the best technology in my career”) with a permanent topology that promises to be radical and revolutionary. Currently the battle is being played out both in the air (Verizon outbidding AT&T for Straight Path) and the ground (carriers negotiating with fiber/small cell providers). Verizon’s 5G headlines continue, most recently with its Corning announcement, while T-Mobile seems to downplay the NT excitement, and to that point AT&T looks to deploy at a tempered pace, seeing no need to accelerate a buildout well ahead of use cases/adoption when such deployments are costly at the present time.

Synesael finds that T-Mobile is “Still our favorite name,” both for its “improving fundamentals,” and as a “compelling takeout candidate."

However, Synesael notes as well that T-Mobile, and Sprint, which has always been T-Mo’s presumed dance partner, have both incurred greater and greater volatility because of the week-to-week chatter about a merger. Consequently, the two stocks have increased risk, he writes, because of both the uncertainty of a deal happening, and lack of clarity about what the terms of any deal might ultimately be.

T-Mobile shares today closed down $1.85, or almost 3%, at $63.84.