Kansas City, Mo. ? Sprint Corp. finds itself elevated to the third-largest wireless company in the country but facing a much larger competitor, following the federal blessing Tuesday of a merger between Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless Services Inc.

The Federal Communication Commission approved the merger a day after the consolidation was cleared by anti-trust regulators in the Justice Department.

The consolidated Cingular, based in Atlanta, will have 47.6 million subscribers, jumping over current leader Verizon Wireless, which had 40.4 million customers this summer. Sprint moves from fourth to a distant third with 23.2 million subscribers as of last month.

For their part, Sprint officials said the consolidation wouldn’t change their strategy, which has focused on selling packages of local, long-distance, wireless and Internet services to business customers. Scott Stoffel, a spokesman for the Overland Park-based firm, said becoming a dominant provider in the business sector offset any disadvantages of being smaller.

“We like the hand we’re playing,” Stoffel said.

Telecommunications analysts largely agreed with that idea, saying that while Sprint and other wireless providers could see some erosion of market share to an entity with Cingular’s management and AT&T Wireless’ brand name, it should be minor and temporary.

“It is going to create a harder environment,” said Greg Gorbatenko, an analyst with Marquis Investment Research in Chicago. “But Sprint is executing and they aren’t focusing on Cingular. It’s not like a new competitor is coming into the market.”

David Willis, of META Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said the move could actually represent an opportunity for Sprint and others to take advantage of confusion in the marketplace, as well as grab AT&T Wireless customers who aren’t willing to switch to Cingular or are kicked off the system as the consolidated company pulls out of some markets for antitrust reasons.

“In the short term, there’s a huge marketing push that the other carriers will be drowned in if they don’t step up their own marketing,” Willis said. “This is a tremendous insertion opportunity for other carriers to say, ‘If you’re looking at phones anyway, look at our phones.”‘

Shares of Sprint closed up 45 cents at $20.63 in trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.