Complicating things, AT&T announced in December that as an interim transition -- a transitional transition? -- it was going to overlay GSM/GPRS service on its TDMA system this year and next, before truly migrating to EDGE in 2002. (And, AT&T says, then to UMTS, or universal mobile telephone service, the new European target, in 2003.)

If that sounds both confusing and even more expensive, well, you've got a good sense of the trap the old TDMA decision has put AT&T Wireless into.

One advantage of becoming an independent company is that AT&T Wireless will, in theory, have greater access to capital, both equity and debt. True enough, as far as that goes, but we're talking about a lot of capital.

Likelier, I think, is that AT&T Wireless will stumble, be unable to fund its complex transition and eventually be acquired. Its customer base certainly has value, but it's way too early to be playing an arb game on AWE.

Whether I'm right or wrong about that, I think the issue for T holders isn't binary -- just whether to swap into AWE or not -- but whether to get out of T, period. I'm convinced holders want to avoid doing nothing; then they get their little proportional slices of all of the companies, and those are not companies I'd want to own.

Since the first of the year, AT&T has pulled up from the high teens to the low 20s and remains stuck there. Valuing the broken-up company is extremely difficult because of the dogs in this manger, long distance especially. In general, I think it's fair to say all except wireless are going to be definitively slow-growth businesses, post-breakup.

There is, certainly, a chance that a severed AT&T Wireless will enjoy a temporary run-up later this year, conceivably to as high as $30 or so. That would be a sensational gain for beleaguered AT&T owners, especially after the past year's sickening slide from about $60. But I'd forsake the iffy prospect of that gain for the security of redeploying any capital currently in T positions into stocks with better prospects over the next couple of years.

What to do? I say, sell the T position -- and quickly. If you want to tender part of a T position for AWE shares because you have hopes for the wireless business, I'd at least sell the rest of the position first, then tender that remaining stub for AWE.

In the end, I think AT&T Wireless just has too complex and expensive a job ahead, in a business that is both highly capital-intensive and highly price-sensitive, to find much success.