USA Today has a piece in today’s issue about the increasing number of cellular service resellers. We reported just last week that once Cingular gets the assets of AT&T Wireless, AT&T will start up a reseller under the AT&T Wireless name. Other examples are Virgin Wireless and TracFone.

The wireless reseller, known as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), gains revenue without shelling out tens of billions of dollars to buy spectrum and build cell phone towers. TracFone became profitable last year, even as most major cell phone carriers were still losing money after a decade or more.

EarthLink, Disney and Wal-Mart are both rumored to be working on MVNO deals, which is going to make for a very competitive space.