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Cingular Wins bid for AT&T Wireless
Newer Guy writes "Cingular has won the bidding war for AT&T Wireless with an offer of $15 a share, or about $40.5 billion." This means Vodafone is out, and the number of competitors for wireless devices in the US is down by one.
that I'm canceling my AT&T wireless phone as of today.
the number of competitors would still be reduced by one. Vodafone is a major player in Verizon Wireless.
Less carriers means less competition means higher prices.
In the end, it's the consumers who will lose out with this consolidation of mobile providers.
I have been pwned because my
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
The mobile phone industry is one industry that could actually benefit from consolidation. Running redundant networks with redundant cell towers is very expensive. 3-4 major players should provide enough competition to keep prices down.
Remember the m-life spot. Who know after three months of pumping up this m-life that it was for a mobile phone plan. What ya goin' do now!
that AT&T Wireless is based in Redmond, Washington?
I'll just go ahead and let you guys connect the dots.
I've been a customer of AT&T Wireless for about five years. Up until about a year ago, I never had a complaint about them and thought that they were a pretty tight service.
Then I moved and they renewed my contract without telling me. I didn't know until the end of the year when I called to renew and get a deal and found out that I wasn't up for renewal for another five months.
Over the course of the past year, my bill has been incorrect on three different occasions, two of them, I just paid because I had absolutely no desire to deal with the customer service team. Long hold tiimes, RUUUUUUDE people and some of the worst double-talk about their policies.
I just thought it was interesting how they started to go down the tubes and now this. I'm not saying that one less competitor is a good thing, but AT&T wireless customers really don't have anything to lose here. It can't get much worse...
albeit at frequencies incompatible with most of the rest of the world.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
So the question is will at&t's decent gsm network improve cingular's horrid coverage reputation or will cingular's bring down at&t's established services...hmm...
Can you hear me now...
(wait for it)
(wait for it)
NO CARRIER.
SHIT!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
And I have to say that they've been nothing but courteous and respectful on the phone with me. They've even taken off $200+ long distance fees, and given me some extra perks(Free 2mb internet downloads/month).
Could tie down our cellular market a bit up 'round where I am....
It's the "I can tell Vodaphone to swallow my balls now" plan.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Which provider were you with again? The phone I was looking at had a built-in camera, but nothing as extravagant as a cocksucking device and an espresso machine. Wow. Just... Wow.
What happens to the regional AT&T Networks? In the South East, there is a company owned by Triton Communications called SunCom, and they PROUDLY state, everywhere that they are part of the AT&T network. Website Just look at their logo! I wonder what this means for companies like them? Will AT&T Wirless be mirged out of existence?
--sig fault--
..
A lot of relieved Vodafone investors then -- or potential investors for that matter -- who it seems didn't have much confidence in the ATT buyout.
Now, next try for Vodaphone: Vivendi.
Why gripe about a reduction in the number of wireless providers, when the last mile of copper is still a legal monopoly?
Every wonder why wireless phone service is becoming cheaper than wired? Ever wonder why your wired service is a few decades behind in technology?
Ever wonder why you can get a broadband cell phone set up immediately, but you often have to wait a month for DSL installation?
Say what you want about the wireless market, it will soon offer better services at cheaper prices than wire. And the difference isn't technology, it's regulation.... it's the legislated monopoly that claims to protect consumers. But nowadays, poor folks who talk a lot are using wireless phones, because it's cheaper.
Is it inherently a bad thing to have one less competitor? Isn't competition supposed to only be the path towards customer satisfaction? In the world of wireless, where the end is good coverage, an excellent infrastructure, and flexible plans, as long as competition fosters these things it's good to have one more carrier in the fray. However, AT&T has arguably the worst network and worst coverage of any provider. Having them swallowed into a much larger network with much broader coverage is not inherently a bad thing.
This is not to debate the merits of Cingular's network or to compare their coverage or plans with Verizon, T-mobile, or Sprint's--this is simply to say that beleagured AT&T customers serve to gain from the acquisition.
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
Yes it can. I thought I had escaped Cingular by switching to AT&T. After that whopper of a $100 overcharge that no one at the Cingularly bad company could explain or correct, I knew I had to move. The charge was not for minutes over our monthly allowance - it was simply an additional charge on the bill.
Yes, it can get much, much worse. Switch while you still have your wallet intact.
... rallied after it was announced that they had lost the bid for purchase of that ATT segment to Cingular.
A lot of relieved Vodafone investors (or potential investors for that matter) then who it seems didn't have much confidence in the ATT buyout.
Now, next try for Vodaphone: Vivendi.
that I moved from ATTWS to Cingular last week? Do I have to pay the balance due? lol!
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
I hope they get rid of the people that do the billing when Cingular takes over, I don't want to deal with that crap any more. Man I thought I was rid of AT&T and the monthly calls to them to complain about my bill.
'And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo Every day you meet quite a few...'
Creeping toward monopoly, or only a (smaller) handful of key players in the mobile phone market might not be so bad in terms of quality of service. For some markets consumers benefit from conglomeration of resources. Think about long distance service. There are 3 major players and a handful of tiny players. I don't feel particularly ripped off on my long distance service. If there were 45 different long distance companies, then they would all be charging each other fees to go from network to network, there would be incompatibility problems which would cause decreased quality and also slower adaptation of new technology.
:-)
Don't get me wrong, the reason it's like this is because the government doesn't step in and regulate the industry as much as it "should". If we were magically fully utilizing all of the state of the art fiber optic line that we had in the ground and it was all seamlessly available on the free market for any provider to rent at a standardized price, then having 100 bandwidth/long-distance companies would indeed be a good thing for consumers.
But like the wording of my example might suggest, I don't think it would be possible for the technology to stay state of the art AND fully regulated at the physical layer even if the government wanted to. Governments are (reasonably...) good at taking something economically tangible, like value-units of food or healthcare, and distributing it pretty much fairly (not that they always do this, but if they do then they are capable of succeeding).
But even if the US government regulated the network, and had a board of domain experts constantly auditing the state of the system, the fact of the matter is they would not have the motivation to maintain a state of the art network to support bandwidth and voice. Greedy corporations are good for that.
And 100 greedy corporations would never be able to interoperate and also provide state of the art and fairly priced services.
Lawrence Lessig, are you reading this? Set me straight!!
You Now what, customers are gonna pick up the bill. That's right. Here in Europe everybody got frenzy when the governments put teh 3G licenses on auction. Well all our operators forked out Billion$. How are they paying for it? Well we are! Altough there are ever more susbcribers to their service prices have not come down. Forget about the whole economies of scale and inversed moores law for telecommunication prices. We have kept a steady Price tag. Every time we text we have to pay roughly 20 Us cents for a 160 caracter SMS! Beter yet whenever we travel abroad (to another EU country) we end up paying calls for about 1.2$ per minute. That's for inbound calls too. I'm sick of it and have decided to ease off on my phone. Email is massively back in my live. Welcome to the club America
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Let`s just get these out of the way now...
"I for one welcome our new Singular overlords!"
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Netwerk!"
and wait for it...
"All your network are belong belong to us!"
davejenkins.com |
I tried to buy a phone and service from AT&T Wireless last November, only to find that their store literally was incapable of selling me one because "their computers were down." This was the case for days. I've seen postings online by their employees detailing what a mess their internal systems are. Hopefully Cingular knows what they are getting into in terms of merging their operations.
Also it's important to remember here that AT&T Wireless hasn't been a part of AT&T proper since 2001. They are a separate company with rights to the name and logo.
... for people living in Europe!
The rant you make has nothing to do with GSM. You can get feature-laden phones for other services too.
And besides that, if you don't want to use those phones, don't. Sure, it's getting harder to find phones that are just basic phones, but if the freebie phone you get with your service contract also happens to have a camera that you never use, who gives a damn? If it comes in handy, you'll have it and if it doesn't, you'll ignore it. No loss either way and no hardship on your part.
And further, what does this have to do the overabundance of people driving SUVs and not paying attention to the road? Or with talking on cell phones while driving? Get a grip or get a hug as someone else suggested.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I have heard various "learned" sources state that there is little point in having more than 3 serious competitors in any market.
4 7255,00 .asp
Fishing around on the web for a synopsis of this theory, I came across this:
"So why three? The authors contend that markets are inherently efficient, and three competitors is the best number to promote and sustain that efficiency. Having two companies will lead either to monopoly pricing or to the two destroying each other, and more than three leads to overcapacity and perpetual price wars.
Thus, when faced with three established competitors in a field, you want to think long and hard about whether you're willing to spend the money to knock one of them off. Consider instead becoming a product specialist ("We make the world's best X") or a niche player ("We only serve the Y market"). Trying to force your way in either by taking on a market leader directly or by expanding outside of your niche just doesn't seem to be a wise use of resources, according to the research."
The source of this article can be found here:
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,
why do they want AT&T? it used to be a massive monopoly, now its a bad third place, whats to gain? it's going to need a LOT of investment to get back off the ground.
> Beter yet whenever we travel abroad (to another EU country) we end up paying calls for about 1.2$ per minute.
I really hope that the European Commission cracks down on the operators over this. They need to get their act together. The whole mobile roaming thing is a serious impediment to the principle of freedom of movement in the E.U. In fact, I suspect that because of this it's only a matter of time before they do force the operators' hands.
I mean for crying out loud, I have to roam even whilst travelling elsewhere in Ireland. (N.I. is U.K. networks). Yet Vodafone and O2 are two major networks both sides of the border. Can ANY valid reason be offered for higher roaming (heck, ANY roaming) charges in the case of ROI/NI cross-over?
Even if there is higher costs involved, they could have roaming charges DOUBLE the normal charges and STILL be a fraction of what current roaming charges are.
GRRRR. Gnarg. BLEAH. Rant, rave, etc... Just don't get me started on BANKING whilst in other E.U. States - it's mental (and expensive) DESPITE the Eurozone!
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Who know after three months of pumping up this m-life that it was for a mobile phone plan.
I remember the billboard with an 8-year-old girl, thinking "what's an mlife, and how do I get one?" The answer, Virginia, is that nobody really knows, but it costs about $40 billion.
Those mlife ads always gave me the creeps, anyway. There was always something a little too close to a religious overtone to them... they looked like they were designed by the same folks who put together a local megachurch's billboard campaign. Kinda like "contemporary Christian" music is disturbingly similar to pop music, with "Jesus" in the place of "Baby".
Gives me the creeps. Just give me that old time religion... it's good enough for me!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Also, here we used to have two wireless operators, and the competition really only showed when the third started. On the other hand, for our small market a fourth operator would be an overkill, I believe, unless the borders really start to dissolve in the EU.
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
Perhaps this means that all of those AT&T Wireless customers (I was one - no longer am) will now get better service, both customer service and carrier service. Billing problems aside, trying to get ahold of the person in the current AT&T Customer Service to deal with a problem with either your phone or your bill is ridiculous. The Cingular people will likely do a MUCH better job than the behemoth that is AT&T. As far as coverage, AT&T coverage was great when I had it, but it was definitely oversubscribed. With the addition of Cingular towers to the equation, perhaps AT&T's customers will see some relief soon in major metropolitan areas.
I switched from Cingular to Verizon some months back, and pay MORE for the "same service" under Verizon. Except I'm getting tons more service, the dead spots are almost non existant, and when they are, it's usually only for the span of 100 yards or so, not miles like Cingular.
Also, Cingular screwed up my billing on almost a monthly basis. They kept claiming that I was delinquent on my payments, only my payments go out automatically 5 days in advance (I never incurred extra charges, so it was a flat fee every month). I know they got the payments on time, but they'd feed me the "You have to allow us 5 business days to process your payment" BS. My bill is paid the day you receive the check, not the day you get around to telling your computer system that it's paid. Heck, they cash the checks before they enter them in to their system, all of my checks were cashed 1-2 days before the due date, but they still told me I was delinquent.
I'd call every month, and every month, they'd take off the late fees when I complained about it, but do you know how old this gets? Every single month calling them to get them to correct their errors. I switched off of them and evaluated AT&T and Verizon as potential new service providers, and decided on Verizon only because of the glowing testimony given by a coworker, who also lent me his phone for a day so I could check to see if those dead spots (eg, my house and my work) in Cingular's network were there for Verizon, when they were non existant under Verizon.
If I had switched instead to AT&T, I'd be canceling my service right away even if it meant I had to suck down the early termination fee.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Is SBC just determined to piece together what the courts broke up twenty years ago?
"When i last nodded off, there was something called the Sherman Antitrust Act." ~Gore Vidal
I wonder if my AT&T cell phone will make my computer speakers make farting noises whenever it rings now...
I had a Cingular phone and got rid of it because everytime it would receive information or a phone call, my computer speakers would erratic and start sputtering.
I go from the company with the absolute worst customer service in the world to the company with the absolute second worst customer service in the world, who just inherited the title of "worst" as the worst is now gone....
Not to, uh, sound selfish or anything, but who were you thinking of going with next?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I'd like to know if Rogers AT&T Wireless will see any benefits from this purchase... We need better rates and better service in Canada. Maybe this union will trickle down *shrug*
I know from all of the Cingular commercials I hear that Cingular is a small little company against the big behemoths, right? They aren't some big, huge wireless provider, the commercials say they are like a little adept startup. Commercials wouldn't lie would they?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
How and where does any company come up with 40 BILLION dollars?!?
Its a good thing I only opted for a one-year contract with AT&T Wireless when I switched from Cingular back in November. There is no way I'll resubscribe this year with the merged entity unless the FCC forces SBC to spin off Cingular (doubtful). I do not want to be forced into signing up for a residential landline with SBC just as they do with DSL. My rule of thumb is I do not do any business with SBC and I don't intend to break this now. I don't reward shoddy service providers like SBC.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I also wonder if the AT&T towers can be used with the SIM card service that Cingular has - I like this form of phone because you don't have to authorize a phone at a dealer, just stick your card in.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I turned down a job with those ATTWS clowns back in Feb. It just didn't feel right.
The worst part? As I interviewed numerous architects and asked the question "What do you worry about most?" EVERYONE said "more layoffs".
Those were mainly sr. contributors with 7+ years experience in the company. Normally, I'd expect concerns about not meeting schedule, etc.
Also amusing was that nobody knew (including the managers) who 'owned' system performance. These clowns had tens of millions of HP servers running customer service and they didn't even have a performance manager, strategy, etc.
And then they wondered why the system collapsed during the number portability fiasco.
Good luck to everyone at ATTWS.
Oh yeah.. They were also cheap bastards. The funny thing.. During the week of the interview I was staying in a $2M condo at Whistler that was owned by a VP at ATTWS.. I can assure you that those guys are doing Just Fine no matter how much they pressure their 'lackies'.
You don't have to be subscribed to a landline with Cingular. They are not an SBC company. I think they were part of BellSouth (SHITTTTTTY!) but not anymore. I have their GSM service. It is OK. Not great coverage but the rollover plan is cool. Never run out of minutes.
I know that SBC owns some of Cingular, but dont they also have a piece of Vodaphone? I read this on the internet so it HAS to be true. I am curious to see if wireless's ownership will be owned by a few like our Media outlets. I wonder if Cingular called it "My takeover plan".
Suncom (as most AT&T networks) is GSM - there are some networks within both Cingular and AT&T that are NOT GSM. I believe the Florida market (around Jacksonville) has a non SIM card TDMA Cingular network - I think areas of Tennessee may have the same for Cingular.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
...for a shitty company to get its customers back-- by buying the competitor the customers fled to.
I left Cingular two years ago because they kept not automatically billing my (unexpired) credit card like they were supposed to, and THEN sticking me with late fees on the unpaid balance, as if it were my fault that they didn't charge my perfectly valid credit card. After the third time I had to call them up and yell at them about it after opening the previous month's statement, I started looking at AT&T Wireless plans. Very soon after that, I switched. Took me about 30 minutes to cancel my Cingular service, they were throwing all kinds of shit at me to stay.. Free months, free additional services, etc. At the end of the conversation they asked me if I knew anyone who needed a mobile phone, so I could just transfer the account to them instead of cancelling it. A little desperate, are we?
And now I'm going to be their customer again, and there'll be one less place for me to go if their suckiness starts affecting me again.
~Philly
Vodaphone owns 47% of Verizon Wireless (I believe, percentage may be slightly off, but close). Part of the deal was that the gov't was going to require Vodaphone to sell off their entire stake in Verizon if they won the bid for ATTWS. Thus, the # of competitors remains the same.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
That really depends on several factors, including what frequency your phone uses, what technology it uses, and how close the tower is that your phone is "connected to." In my experience, TDMA phones (of unknown frequency) make a sputtering sound, while 1900 MHz GSM phones make a humming sound. The intensity of the interference depends on how close you are to the tower, since most phones will adjust their transmission power levels to the lowest possible level. Both companies use the same technology (TDMA and GSM), but Cingular seems to have more 850 MHz GSM towers.
I bet we see Vodaphone or Verizon grab T-Mobile now.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
has a stake in Verizon. & Docomo has a stake in ATTWS... Standard case of Corporate-Incest, but not all related to SBC&BellSouth.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
Use guys done understand! It's just biznezz!!! When I see gov. officials posting to this ng (Newsgrop/Blog)... Anyway, can you say pay off!!! Did anyone hear about the babybell's payoff scheme with organized crime, about two weeks ago?
www.linuxfree.net Quality linux distributions on cd/dvd
If you have AT&T Wireless, get out NOW. Cingular has the most awful, broken billing system ever. They will shut down your account if your bill is one day late and charge you an activation fee to turn it back on. Their highest national plan still does not give you anywhere near unlimited national service. Not to mention it takes them about a day to get a phone activated right. Unfortunately, AT&T Wireless, one of the better (but still not good compared to what Asia has) wireless providers will most likely cease to exist as we know it. This can be a really good thing for Cingular, as they were the most logical buyer, but they will likely botch this. I have AT&T Wireless; as soon as I saw they were up for sale I started looking for another provider and am now in the switch process. Good luck.
I am feeling fat and sassy
In the end, it's the consumers who will lose out with this consolidation of mobile providers.
You are an idiot. Verizon is the 300 lb. gorilla
in the US cell market. They have no serious competition. It's either go with Verizon and deal with their moronic selection of phone hardware, or go Cingular/ATT/TMobile and deal with call dropouts and moronic billing and customer support.
Some real competition for Verizon is a Good Thing to keep them honest.... Can you hear me now Verizon? Where's my Treo600 now, you CDMA bitches?
I've been an AT&T Wireless customer since early 1999.
Well, in that case I'd like to say a big hello to the Cingular executive who has mod points on this fine morning.
~Philly
Last time I was in the US, last August, my UK Orange GSM phone roamed on both AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile in SE New England: Boston, southern RI and Martha's Vinyard. Perhaps AT&T do use CDMA but they clearly use GSM too.
Orange have both AT&T and Cingular listed as GSM roaming networks in the US.
Your complaint about Cingular's billing system may be legit but if ATT's is better why do you assume they would get rid of ATT's and not Cingular's?
I switched from Cingular to ATT because when I drove from California to Florida in 2001 there were few places along the way that had Cingular's service. With ATT phone towers and customers added to Cingular, they will probably become the wireless service with the largest and most access points without the "extended range" or other obnoxious status messages that mean more money.
I did like the memory chip in Cingular's phones which I had to give up when switching to ATT but perhaps I will regain that with this merger.
In the mean time I have an offer from ATT on my desk to get $50 credit on my bill if I sign up for a new annual service. Don't know if I would lose the ability of having the roll-over minutes that Cingualr has, a feature I look forward to as I don't use my phone that much.
Athens GA limits its franchises to 5 carriers - Nextel already has a license - Greenville SC (where I live) has the highest number of cell phones per capita in the country=76% - not sure, but I think we are limited too - this is why we don't have TMobile in the area. With our #1 rating -you'd think all carriers would be here - so there's proof that this happens.
not going to be approved by the FTC or the FCC. Their stake Verizon (the country's largest wireless carrier), plus the purchase of ATTWS (The nation's #3 Carrier) was going to be blocked by the FTC without a selloff of Verizon. That was public knowledge during the bidding. They were informed of that beforehand. It has a lot to do with total market-capitalization, and the scuttlebut was that if they owned both co's, that was just going to be too large a percentage of the market for one co. to hold. Yes, there are still regulatory approvals needed for the current deal to go through, but my understanding is that there isn't a major problem that would require one company to sell off it's stake in another.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
I know this is all circumstantial, but I've really liked Cingular. I go camping and fishing alot, and am typically the only person with coverage even in the middle of a remote trout stream. I get wireless internet in most urban areas, and my bill has never been over $40 or so for 300 minutes, no roaming or LD, and free nights/weekends.
I do think time is ripe for cheap, ubiquitous, high-speed wireless, though. To that end, I think more competition is probably better.
If it reduces the number of kiosks at the mall trying to give me four free phones, I'm all for it.
Nearly two years ago I was with Cingular. Roughly half way into my one year contract with them, my nokia phone, "died" (for lack of a better term). I really never cared becuase I had two phones on the plan, the other being an Erikson model. Roughly two months after this incident, my erikson model "died" (the other end could not hear me when i called out on the phone). So, I traveled down to my nearest cingular office (not one of those small, teenage staffed joints), but one of their corporate offices here in central new york. I informed a representitive of what had happened, and as politely as possible she informed me that there was nothing she could do for me, and I would have to continue paying my phone bill for the last 3 months of my contract (for phones that no longer work). I then reluctantly asked if i could pay a penalty fee and switch phones, or exchange the non working ones for at least one new phone that would work. The representivie informed me that I was not allowed to do this until my contract expired. Well, to sum up what happened, I still owe three months of service to Cingular, but like hell will they ever see one penny from me. They did not provide me with a service for my remaining three months, considering I was never able to use it. Cingluar is bad news. I'm now with Cricket Wireless (yeah i know.. not the best choice.. but the coverage on my phone suits me everywhere I venture, and unlimited service for $29.99/month is'nt bad.) I will never go back to Cingular, ever.
AT&T's TDMA network had great nationwide coverage, and they were the first major provider to offer a nationwide no-roaming plan. My understanding is that their GSM network isn't nearly as good yet.
Vodafone (which is a major provider in Europe, where everyone is GSM) is also a major shareholder in Verizon, which uses CDMA.
Here's the list of the major providers and their network types:
AT&T TDMA-->GSM Cingular TDMA-->GSM Verizon CDMA Sprint CDMA T-Mobile GSM Nextel iDEN Alltel CDMA US Cellular CDMAAT&T sold off their cable TV and cable Internet to Comcast. Now they sold off their Wireless branch to Cingular. What do they have left, long distance plans?
Why would they leave themselves with only the things from the past that are likely to die out eventually, and ditch the new technologies?
no comment
I used to have AT&T when it was TDMA and it worked wherever I took my phone: camping, hunting, the office. Then my old TDMA phone gave up the ghost and they basically told me I had to get a GSM phone.
Their GSM service is pathetic. The phone doesn't work at my house, doesn't work in the office, drops calls all around the city and I get zero signal strength when in the woods (where my TDMA phone would go!).
I was going to cancel my AT&T service the moment the contract was up but I wonder if Cingular will improve things. Its just insane how bad this phone works.
I gotta find a new carrier. T-Mobile looks good. I don't so much mind GSM as much as I mind AT&T's lack of towers and capacity.
All posters that complain about coverage:
Your complaints are meaningless unless you specify the area in which you live. Saying "my coverage sucks" is uninformative and holds no weight.
I live in the metro NY area and my AT&T connection is average. Compared to the Sprint coverage, it seems to better, but my friends and family prefer Verizon and/or T-Mobile over both.
100% Insightful
I work in TELECOM, but not wireless, which platform is the "wave of the future"? IE the one that CAN push serious throughput???
I'm currently an AT&T Wireless customer living in the Southeastern US. Does anyone have any opinions on where I should go from here? Stay with Cingular, go with Verizon? What?
Not less carriers, fewer carriers. "Fewer" is used for quantities, "less" is used for measurements. "Add less flour, make fewer cookies."
(Grumble grumble pet peeve etc.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Maybe this will put to bed all those critics who say that GSM is a "minor" technology in the US compared to CDMA--between Cingular, AT&T, and T-Mobile, GSM makes up the overwhelming majority of cell service in the US.
so how long until we see expanded coverage?
so that's the end of ATT cable (comcast merger) and now ATT Wireless (proposed cingular merger.)
ATT long distance is going to wither and die of its own, which will leave just ATT business services (the data network.) which is another business in a clotted field.
may I entertain merger possibilities for them, too?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This started happening with Cingular in my vehicle, and on all of my computers with external speakers. That is how I know when my phone is ABOUT to ring - the speakers click and chirp.
--
Part 15...seems kind of restrictive to require manufacturers to include one silly little part.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Because so far, the phones here are mostly CDMA or PCS crap, years behind Yurop, and don't have bluetooth. Hell, Sprint even toughts SMS as something new and exciting. Yeah, so is my color TV by their standards.
I rate this deal DoublePlusGood! Hopefully the rumored Apple PDA we are going to see in June of this year will include a phone that is GSM. WOOT!
Employees have stock at 29.50, they are getting 15 dollars.
Not only do they loose money, they get laid off at the end of the year.
Cingular's is mostly Union, ATTWS is not. How will this affect the merger?
I have my phone, long distance, DSL, and wireless with Verizon (that's one big bill).
For a while every time I sent them a payment they'd send me a check back for the same amount a couple of weeks later, along with a delinquient bill. Apparently they were crediting my payments to an old closed-out account I used to have a few months prior (funny - they accepted the first few payments just fine). They DID NOT return MY check (as if it had bounced or something) - they cashed my check and wrote me back a check of their own for the same amount. I guess the post office didn't complain (two people paying 37 cents each way to send the same money back and forth to each other). And yes - my NEW phone/account number was on my checks.
So, I went with automated credit-card billing. I figured that if I just give them a blank-check to take money from me they might just feel like taking money from me (as opposed to taking it and sending it back).
You can imagine my surprise when after getting the notice that I can stop paying my bill my next bill indicates that they charged my credit card about $3 and the rest is past-due. How do you end up with a past-due balance on an auto-pay account? Apparently when I had called to complain a few months prior about the delinquent bills that they didn't accept payment for they had put some sort of freeze on my balance so the credit-card routine wasn't charging me for the full amount.
The good news is that the last few months have been smooth sailing - you apparently only have to hassle Verizon for 6 months or so before they figure things out. And fortuantely I don't need to apply for a mortgage anytime soon (I'm sure all the 1-month-behind payments don't look good).
That isn't half as good as my brother's attempt to get a line installed at his new home. They wanted a deposit since he didn't have phone service with them in the previous six months (which they would hang onto indefinitely - not credit to the first few bills). He pointed out that he managed to qualify for his new mortgage, the phone company shouldn't have trouble trusting him with a phone bill. The rep replied that the rules said that you needed a deposit - unless you could document that you were low-income and couldn't afford it. Gee, that makes sense - you need a deposit so they can be sure you'll be paying your bills unless you can prove that you can't afford to pay your bills.
Must be some regulation...
Please, let's face it, our mobile market is idiotic. Competition with utterly incompatible standards in a public utility service is BAD. Europe, with the roaming/sharing agreements between everyone is definitely preferable.
And before you say "but my service with vendor X is great," trust me, I have all the major vendors. Yes, I have a Verizon phone cause it has the best coverage. Yes, I have a TMobile phone, cause I need an overseas number. Yes, I have an ATT Blackberry, with phone service cause I need a link to corporate email. Yes, my wife had a Sprint phone, and let me tell you how utterly useless it was (so bad I couldn't believe they sold the service). And yes, between all of these, there are still areas where the service sucks. Verizon, the best of the bunch in the US, still is useless when I travel overseas, since they decided to deploy only CDMA technology, which is useless everywhere but maybe Canada. Let's hear it for free market chaos!
preach it, brother
I wish I had a phone with an expresso machine though. Then I wouldn't have to wait in line with all those "yuppie fucks" and their triple wide baby strollers at Starbucks!
Where can I get one of these "cocksucking" phones?
BellSouth Mobility + SBC = Cingular Cingular + AT&T = ? A better service. A service Verizon can't give to me in the South East. AT&T wireless and Verizon are still dead spot havens here. But AT&T with access to the Cingular network will improve Cingular's network range and AT&T's. Cingular and Nextel are the only cell's that really sell here.
CDMA seems to have better sound quality than GSM, at least it has everywhere I've compared.
The real advantage for GSM is that it's standardised, so I should be able to take my existing GSM phone from T-Mobile and buy service from AT&T and plug the AT&T SIM in my existing phone and go with it... without having to get into a "two year contract or two hundred dollar deposit because you're buying a phone with the service" lock-in.
So I tried it. I have a GSM Pocket PC phone. I found a GSM carrier who was willing to sell me pay-as-you-go service without a phone for $40 a month. So I pull out my checkbook and say, "I'd like a month please". Sorry, I need to provide a credit card or pay a $200 deposit refunded after 24 months.
Why?
"So you don't break the contract.
What contract? This is a pay-as-you-go service! All you're doing is setting a bit in a database somewhere to turn on a SIM! You're risking nothing but about 20c worth of flash memory and a billionth of a penny worth of space in a database somewhere... I've already paid for the hours up front...
All the carriers do this.
This is a pure and unadulterated scam, and so long as they're running it I don't care what standards they're following... I'll keep using my works-anywhere TDMA+analog brick that's all paid off rather than spend money on a phone I don't want or need (especially if in the end I don't actually get the phone).
All phone companies are evil. Some are more evil than others. Cingular is worse than even SprintPCS. I liked AT&T Wireless... until now. I'm leaving them for another carrier, probably US Cellular or t-Mobile. And I'm taking my number with me. And if they ask me why I'll tell them Cingular sucks ass.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
If you think about it, Cingular has lots of markets with just 1900Mhz spectrum (California comes to mind.) AT&T has lots of markets with 800Mhz spectrum (California comes to mind). With control of the old A-B band 800Mhz spectrum *and* a PCS 1900Mhz spectrum, Cingular's coverage is bound to just get better with the acquisition. There are plenty of spaces where Cingular has 800Mhz spectrum (i.e. Chicago) and AT&T has the PCS spectrum. From all the complaints I hear about Cingular in the Chicago area, coverage is just bound to get better.
prices aren't kept down
Compared to what??
Well this would mean something if the Wireless still truely belonged to ATT. It was sold off to McClould about three years ago. Since then the name AT&T was used under a licensing agreement. Shame that the brand name AT&T is worth more then the entire company.
Now maybe I can get reception in my house.
It's too damned cold to go outside to make a cell phone call.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
well because of getting a cheaper service your service cost the same and you get extra crap that you never use. the goal is to have cheaper service not more useless features at the same price.
I certainly agree. The biggest problem with GSM in the U.S. is coverage. I've been with VoiceStream/T-Mobile for about two years now. I love the wide variety of phones available for GSM services. (I have or have had a SE T-68, Danger/Sidekick, a SE P-800 and a Motorola MPX-200). The CDMA carriers have only just recently caught onto the need to have more than basic vanilla phones for their services. Generally I have also found the U.S. GSM carrieres to have more reasonable data pricing plans than the CDMA carriers (although ATTW's new all you can eat EDGE plan is still a bit cher for my tastes). With any luck the ATTW-Cingular merger will help plug the coverage hoes that have long plagued U.S. GSM service and speed up the roll-out of new 3G services. :fingers crossed:
Unfortunatly, all we can do at this time is sit back and wait to see what comes of this.
If music be the food of love, play on...
First company to offer a GMS and WiFi VoiP phone gets my business....
Damn I wish Vodafone had gottent the deal. At least they know how to deploy GSM environments unlike AT&T.
I wonder if I will get rollover minutes now?
--D
I guess this means that AT&T and Cingular Wireless customers will now be able to call inside the network at any time during the day and not get charged for it.
Cingular can finally compete with Verizon.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
I work for AT&T Wireless. From what we are hearing, we may not even have a job in 8-12 months. We've heard different rumors, news on the radio, and of course, on the web. Alot of employees, including myself, are worried because we are hearing that Cingular claims that they can handle their customer base as well as ours. AT&T has a customer base of somewhere around 22 million. Cingular has around 17 million (last time i heard). If its true that they can handle this type of customer volume, where does that leave us? John Zigelis (sp), the high muckity-muck at our company sent out a National Voicemail to us stating that it was the "best thing to do". Well, maybe so for him and the other stock holders since the stock has gone up, according to him, 115% since news of the bid went out. But for grunts like us, pardon my french, but I think were fucked. :\
I work in the cellular industry and would like to counter that youve only heard his side of the story. This is the way people perceive the cellular industry. And if your talking about certain companys, the you hit the nail on the head. Not all cellular companies are like that. How do you know that the reason for the 5 extra months are not valid? I sit at the other end of the phone from him 8 hours a day. When people dont like the answer you give they give storys like the parent post. But who knows, maybe they are trying to screw him.
... on the west coast, FYI
Um...yea, that's old news, the November network being down. Anyway, it wouldn't matter, since the only way Cingular can make money by buying ATTWS is to close the acquired customer service centers (losing not only salaries, but also thereby ditching all computer systems in them).
Does this mean that AT&T wireless users MUST become Cingular users? I.e. some of us have signed one or two year contracts with AT+T wireless, are they still in force? What if someone has AT+T because they left Cingular b/c of a bad experience? SOL?