People who want traditional phone service will pay what they are paying now.
With this merger, AT&T is going to be the biggest phone company and the biggest wireless company. That means they're also going to be the biggest competitor to the cable companies.
AT&T actually exited the cell phone business in its early days and had to buy its way back into wireless later. If it hadn't been broken apart, you'd never have gotten the creative juices of competition that pushed all this new technology we have today.