It’s no secret that Sprint is not keen on the potential AT&T (News - Alert)-T-Mobile USA pairing. Now it’s taken its case to the Federal Communications Commission. Sprint recently filed a petition requesting that the FCC “reject parts of AT&T’s application to absorb T-Mobile’s U.S. spectrum licenses,” according to a St. Louis Business Journal story posted today.

Sprint Nextel (News - Alert) CEO Dan Hesse, who is chairman of CTIA, first publicly expressed his reservations about the AT&T-T-Mobile combination at the CTIA event in March, as reported by TMCnet.

“I do have concerns that it would stifle innovation and too much power would be in the hands of just two” players, Hesse said.

He noted that if regulators allow AT&T to buy T-Mobile, the new company would control 79 percent of the market.

When asked at CTIA (News - Alert) by moderator Jim Cramer of CNBC show Mad Money whether he agreed with media reports that the $39 billion AT&T-T-Mobile combination offers consumers little to cheer about, Hesse responded, “I have to agree with the Times.”

A recent piece on The New York Times website quotes Wall Street telecommunications analyst Jonathan Chaplin as saying that he has “never seen a deal with more regulatory risk be attempted in the U.S.” and that “massive divestitures and concessions” are to be expected. On the other hand, he says, AT&T wouldn’t be attempting to push this deal through if it didn’t hold the strong belief the acquisition would make it through the regulatory approval process without resulting in an untenable position for the wireless giant.

Chaplin in the piece goes on to say that if the deal goes through, it will set up AT&T and Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless as the wireless equivalent of Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, making other competitors “almost irrelevant.”

Indeed. Although Sprint has long been considered a top-tier wireless provider, it runs a distant third to Verizon Wireless and AT&T, even if the T-Mobile (News - Alert) deal is not in the mix.

“Sprint is the biggest loser in this deal,” Ovum analyst Steven Hartley is quoted as saying in a recent TMCnet story by Ed Silverstein.

“Just as it was beginning to recover from its disastrous previous few years, so it is being further cut adrift from the leaders,” continued Hartley, adding that Sprint had 16 percent connection market share in the fourth quarter of 2010 and was the third largest of the four national carriers.