As Wireless Watch analysed last week, with Sprint and T-Mobile essentially unable to merge, the initiative in US consolidation has passed to the cable operators, as seen in Altice’s quad play-focused acquisition of Cablevision. With AOL and DirecTV under their respective belts, Verizon and AT&T have limited freedom to make further major acquisitions on the home front, while Sprint and TMO are more likely to be targets for cablecos than the other way around. That means the mobile players need to look for other ways, apart from M&A, to continue to build up their spectrum arsenals – expanded licence-exempt bands, supporting LTE as well as WiFi; next year’s 600 MHz auction; the rising use of carrier aggregation and of formerly…