Consumer groups aren't too happy with T-Mobile's announcement this week they'd be conducting a spectrum swap with Verizon in exchange for dropping their opposition to Verizon's huge marketing and spectrum deal with the cable industry. The deal is clearly a clever Verizon play to get regulatory approval for the deal -- hoping that by empowering competitor the company can soothe other anti-competitive regulatory worries the deal presents. In a statement, consumer group Public Knowledge argues that the T-Mobile spectrum swap really does nothing to offset the problems the deal creates:Public Knowledge doesn't even really get into the competitive impact the deal will have on smaller telcos like Fairpoint, CenturyLink or Frontier. Those companies are struggling to offer even this generation broadband technology, and likely won't fare well against the combined marketing and regulatory power of Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Still, it's not quite clear what kind of position consistency one can expect from a company that just a few months ago (admittedly thanks to pressure from Deutsche Telekom) was repeating bogus AT&T talking points and gleefully working toward the elimination of tens-of-thousands of jobs.