Slashdot Mirror
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.
the number of competitors would still be reduced by one. Vodafone is a major player in Verizon Wireless.
And I have to say that they've been nothing but courteous and respectful on the phone with me. They've even taken off $200+ long distance fees, and given me some extra perks(Free 2mb internet downloads/month).
The UK has a small number(4-5) of major players in the mobile phone industry. However, prices aren't kept down, and regulators have to force the operators to reduce them.
Decode these
... rallied after it was announced that they had lost the bid for purchase of that ATT segment to Cingular.
A lot of relieved Vodafone investors (or potential investors for that matter) then who it seems didn't have much confidence in the ATT buyout.
Now, next try for Vodaphone: Vivendi.
You Now what, customers are gonna pick up the bill. That's right. Here in Europe everybody got frenzy when the governments put teh 3G licenses on auction. Well all our operators forked out Billion$. 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
Well, they can't "renew" a contract for you. A contract is a binding agreement between two parties. If you had a contract for 2 years, then it's for 2 years. They can't assign you a new contract without your approval. I bet you could have gotten out of that "contract".
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.
Do you have TMobile service where you're at? I'm VERY happy with their service and they're NOT Verizon or Cingular.
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
Well, if you get a tri-band "world" GSM phone it works in 90% of the rest of the world where there is GSM coverage. My SE T68i worked all over Australia and Europe when I traveled there AND everywhere ATTWS has coverage (or roaming agreements) in the USA (which was getting larger and larger each month). Seems like it was compatible "with most of the rest of the world" to me...
I'd run, if I were you. I finally got my fiance out of Cingular's grasp after her seemingly endless contract stopped getting renewed and added her to my TMobile plan. The prices are great and TMobile is awesome for customer service (at least they have been for me for several years back into the Voicestream years).
As someone else has said, it can get much worse.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Close, all three have their own towers. About 6 months to a year ago they all signed agreements letting their subscribers use the towers of one of the other 2 companies (Cingular, TMobile, AT&T).
Cingular has the largest GSM network, or did last I looked, if I'm not mistaken... followed by TMobile and then AT&T.
AT&T Wireless has never been a massive monopoly or even part of one. AT&T used to be an independent cellular carrier (McCaw Cellular Communications) competing with the AT&T-owned Bell carriers. After the AT&T breakup, AT&T bought McCaw. It was demerged in 2001, and the name really is the only part that has anything to do with old monopolies.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"Map depicts an approximation of outdoor coverage." As a current Cingular customer, I can attest to the fact that it's a *WILD* approximation - their coverage actually sucks. I've been in several major metro areas where I could get *no* signal, while my Verizon-using counterparts were okay.
THINK
stock options - Bellsouth/SBC/Cingular have well in excess of that in capitalization/infrastructure/stock - AT&T will also take payments of said stock over 3 years.
We cancelled ours already, without knowing. We were screwed by AT&T's coverage maps being EXTREMELY inaccurate and their salespeople lying, but we got out in time to switch to Sprint.
AFAIK the SIM card is a proprietary feature of the GSM cellular transmission method. T-Mobile and Cingular are American GSM carriers. Then you have CDMA carriers like VerizonWireless and Sprint PCS. As for AT&T Wireless I thought that they were still operating on the TDMA cellular transmission method. If so, then the SIM card wouldn't be an option.
I completely agree. There are times I simply don't bother sitting on hold for 3 hours (as I have done more than once!) to contest a 15 dollar issue. I hate their contracts and everything about them, but -- I got a really tight handset and their service in my town is the best of all the providers (except Cingular, and now it doesn't matter!). Hopefully their customer service will improve a little. Maybe...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
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
Watch that billing with Verizon also! I pay my Verizon home service through an ebill with Checkfree. I can not simply select "pay bill" for it to be sent automatically, I have to subtract at least 2 business days because they were doing the same delay thing and charging late fees. Funny thing, I called to Verizon to inquire about the delay, they stated they have to hold on to a check for "3 to 5 days" before actually crediting the account. I explained it was an electronic payment through Checkfree, she claimed it was paid with physical check but could not give me the check number because of technical problems (I know why, because a check number did not exist). I know sometimes physical checks are sent out by Checkfree but my Verizon payment is all electronic but for some reason, still delayed.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I'm biased as I work for Nextel, but we are growing rapidly nationwide. I travel a lot and very rarely have any issues. Obviously all my coworkers are on Nextel, but also my friends and family have all converted to Nextel after WLNP hit. Now we all use the radio nationwide for unlimited voice communications. On the cell side, Nextel is well known for its Free Incoming plans, which offer unlimited incoming cellular. For very heavy users, we even have a completely unlimited plan (unlimited everything)...
Like I said, I'm biased, but I am being honest. Hope it helps.
Come play Moral Decay!
AT&T's network is CDMA. Current AT&T phones won't work on Cingular networks, and vica versa. They wouldn't improve their coverage at all, instead they'll wind up slowly migrating all of their phones to one network, selling off the other set in the process.
Anyhow, I agree about this eventually benefitting customers. There are too many providers in the US with too many distinct formats, too many "regionalized" systems (in fact, AT&T didn't work in upstate new york at all until about two months ago), This makes it harder to have true choice in providers like in Japan or Europe. I didn't want to go Verizon, but I had to...the calling area is just so much better than with any of the others. Better to slowly build a universal network on a single standard, chip away at the others until they "Betamax" (since none of them is necessarily "better" than the others, the choice will be somewhat arbitrary) and get everybody on the same network with the same towers. Then it'll also be easier for start-ups to penetrate the market.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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
"SBC Communications Inc. owns 60 percent of Cingular, while BellSouth owns 40 percent."
Come play Moral Decay!
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.
"AT&T's network is CDMA. Current AT&T phones won't work on Cingular networks, and vica versa. They wouldn't improve their coverage at all, instead they'll wind up slowly migrating all of their phones to one network, selling off the other set in the process."
I'm curious as to what market you're referring to? In western Washington state, AT&T is selling TDMA and GSM phones (I just bought a TDMA-version Motorola v60). They're referring to GSM equipment as "next-generation network" capable, so it appears that they're trying to migrate to GSM. The carriers in this area use the following technologies:
Actually, T-Mobile still uses the 900MHz GSM spectrum in North America. The major reasons AT&T and Cingular use 850MHz are to avoid overcrowding of the 900MHz range (related in small part to the 900MHz home phones) and also because AT&T and Cingular needed towers quickly so they piggyback T-Mobile towers in many areas, especially crowded metro areas. The 850MHz spectrum was cheaper at that point (the FCC auctions off licenses), not to mention quicker time to market.
In the end, it's the consumers who will lose out with this consolidation of mobile providers.
Not necessarily. Around here (south east new england) AT&T wireless sucks. Their service is crappy, they have more dead spots, and they charge more and give you less. Of the 5 people I know who switched to them, 4 switched back to someone else after 3 months. Also, I'm a cingular customer. Currently, I'm on one of the old Cingular Nation plans (no roaming fees, regardless of whose network you'reon). They don't offer that anymore, so eventually, once my phone dies, I'll have to switch to another plan. If cingular buys AT&T Wireless, their network will gain more coverage, and it'll cut down on roaming fees for their existing customers.
Alternatively, one could argue that indeed less carriers means higher prices and less service. And we'll end up back with a monopoly where we started. And the federal government will break it up again. Lather, rinse repeat. Seriously, look at what happened after the AT&T breakup - they divided into all the Baby Bells - how many are left? Precious few. These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my hat that are gone as well as some defucnt wireless providers:
Watch how long it takes before we're right back with "The Phone Company"(TM)
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Maybe the carriers have to make special version of their phones for Europe?
No. The majority of the world uses 900 & 1800 GSM. The US, Canada, Mexico and South America are in the minority in the number of GSM carriers, GSM network coverage and users. The cell phone companies have to specifically design their hardware for a minority market.
None of this changes the fact that U.S, Canadian, Mexican and South American GSM carriers are missing out on a lot of roaming calls.
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.
TMobile traditionally uses 1900MHz in the US and if they're expanding into other bandwidths, I haven't heard it. Not that it's impossible, but there's no case of "T-Mobile still uses the 900MHz GSM" as they never used to, even if they are now.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I've been an AT&T customer for about 5 years. I've been generally satisfied. There are gaps in the coverage in my area (metro NYC), but the best local competitor (Verizon) has an equal amount of gaps, just in different areas. Nothing beats actually trying the phone in the areas that you intend to use it.
AT&T traditionally runs a TDMA system. Verizon, Sprint, and MCI run CDMA systems. TDMA, however, has no future. AT&T has been transitioning to GSM for several years. It will probably require several more years before the transition is complete.
The costs of building out a cellular system are very high. I've seen reference that it costs a provider roughly $1,200 per customer to build the system. Obviously, too many seperate redundant systems will hurt the consumers because the providers need to recoup the cost of building out seperate systems. Equally obvious, without competition the providers will gouge their customers. In the long run, the US consumer will probably be best served by consolidating to three carriers. Verizon/Sprint/MCI would operate a national CDMA network. AT&T/Cingular/T-Mobile would operate a national GSM network. Nextel would operate their own proprietary network.
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 CDMANot 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
I used to work in the construction office for a celluar company. The first year cost for a tower was about 150K in 2000. I have no idea what it would be now
Yes, Nextel is very good if you don't mind spending at least $60-$70 for a decent plan. However, if you're looking for "bang for the buck", I'd suggest looking elsewhere.
AT&T never had CDMA. I got a cell phone with them when they first opened the doors. They have two flavors of TDMA: US TDMA, and the Franco GSM on US frequencies. They have been trying to get customers to transition entirely to GSM. Cingular, likewise, uses GSM and US TDMA.
The US, being the original cellular market, has gone through a lot of protocols. Pre-cell analog (single tower), AMPS & NAMPS (FDMA), digital TDMA of different flavors, and Qualcomm's CDMA. The Europeans, having built up their network after we blazed the path and learned the lessons, had the benefit of starting with their flavor of TDMA, GSM. TDMA had a slower growth pattern here because we had existing widespread AMPS networks, and customers didn't want to give up their AMPS phones for TDMA, which had markedly worse voice quality.
Today, CDMA is arguably a better technology, in theory. AMPS had the best voice quality (when there was no interference/static), giving a full dedicated frequency swath for representing the human voice, based on the Bell experience. NAMPS compressed that to get more calls per cell, but was still pretty much excellent quality. TMDA (time division) digitizes and packetizes the human voice, introducing artifacts from the process, and other issues. CDMA, however, in theory restores the AMPS model of a full spectrum dedicated to representing the human voice. Rather than doing frequency division (FDMA), it does code division: it transmits all calls simultaneously over the exact same frequency range. They are coded, and then picked out of the static at the other end.
Now, that's in theory... the proof is in the pudding. Way back when I worked at Motorola (in cell infrastructure (CIG), not handset), we were doing initial work with Qualcomm's CDMA. I heard that the engineers in the labs were making good progress, got good call quality. But then they did some wider testing, and the quality got much worse. They figured out that the code they devised to encode the voice worked great for a white male midwestern engineer. But not so great for others.
While I think CDMA is a great technology in theory, I also think that given the call degradation failure mode when there is congestion, when networks get greedy and try to cram more and more calls onto a single network node, and so on, TDMA still has the upper hand. Having worked on the business side of the cellular industry, you have to understand that the holy grail of these technologies is not quality: it is density. More calls per physical network node (cell) is the goal. TDMA and CDMA were both designed from day one to be worse than AMPS in terms of call quality, a decision intended to increase call density. It is only through that increased density that everybody and their dog can afford to have a cell phone.
As for having one network and one protocol, then where will innovation come from? That is actually one (possible) benefit to consolidation. When we opened up the frequencies with PCS (which, incidentally, wasn't intended to merely facilitate more and more mobile phone companies), we opened the door to our current environment of cut throat competition, where spending money on innovation gets squeezed out. Now that the market is consolidating, and carriers will be more profitable, we may start seeing some fundamental innovation, other than just with handsets. Wouldn't count on it though.
Larry
AT&T has multiple national plans. I have the AT&T National *Network* plan. That means that you do not pay roaming when you are on the AT&T network. If my phone says AT&T or Extended Area, I am not roaming. There is the other one where you allegedly never pay roaming charges... haven't tried that.
I got my AT&T phone when AT&T first opened for business. I had the "national network roaming" plan from DAY ONE. That was what caused me to get AT&T service, since I knew AT&T had the money to build out a national network, and I would wind up being able to roam to nearly any major city for free, eventually.
Which plan are you on? In either case, if your phone says AT&T, you shouldn't be charged roaming unless you are on a "local" plan.
A couple years ago, I had to do battle with AT&T for months over that issue. They purchased another network, where I travel. Once they integrated the networks, my phone started saying "AT&T" on it, so I started using the network there. And, they charged me for roaming. I called them, and they credited my account. And it kept happening... I was told that once the network billing systems were integrated, it would work as it should. Then, I started having trouble getting credited. AT&T apparently revamped their billing system, and my calling plan got lost... I was still being billed as always, but the AT&T staff couldn't see any details on my billing plan, and thus didn't know squat about how to fix my bill.
Then, they started getting uppity about it. One rep said I was on a local plan, I had to pay roaming out of my local area. I asked her to explain the years and years of my having travelled to both coasts, and not pay roaming, yet travelling 150 miles away to another AT&T market, and being charged roaming (I live in Chicago). She actually had the audacity to say that New York must be part of my local calling area, while Indianapolis is not. I then got a next level person. She acknowledged that they made a mistake, acknowledged that I shouldn't have been billed roaming, but then said that I had to pay, since the charges were more than 30 days and their "policy" was that they cannot adjust charges after 30 days. I said that I don't care about your policy, my *contract* is the only thing that governs what I have to pay. Then I got a "supervisor" who tried to pull the same "local calling area" BS. I again did the logic route, explain to me exactly how New York is local to Chicago, yet Indianapolis is not (both cities, same bill). He got confused, put me on hold, and then said that they would credit it. But still refused to acknowledge that they had erred. Eventually, after a long letter and a threatened lawsuit, and an update to their billing system I am sure, it got sorted out...
Oh, and the roaming thing... I remember the days of analog. I had a book in my glovebox, with a list of all the carriers nationwide. My phone would tell me which cell I was on (national cell ID number) and I'd tell the phone which carrier I wanted to use in that cell, depending on the roaming rate in my little book.
Larry
If you're going to spout a bunch of companies, you should at least do some homework first.
AT&T at the time of its breakup in 1984 consisted of 22 local "Bell" companies, plus its long distance service. AT&T local service was broken up into 7 companies:
Ameritech (IL, IN, OH, MI, WI)
Bell Atlantic (NJ, PA, DC, DE, MD, VA, WV)
Bell South (FL, GA, NC, SC, AL, KY, LA, MS, TN)
NYNEX (NY, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT)
Pacific Telesis (NV, CA)
SBC Comm (AR, IA, KS, MO, OK, TX)
US West (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, UT, WY, MN, ND, SD, NE, OR, WA)
Plus a few independent phone companies like GTE, SNET (Connecticut), and Sprint (only in this context could Sprint be considered "independent").
Over the last 20 years, the original 7 "baby Bells" have gobbled up independents and each other leaving the current 4 Big Bells:
Bell South (Bell South)
SBC (Ameritech, SBC, Pacific Telesis, SNET)
Quest (US West)
Verizon (NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, GTE)
Sprint and a handful of other independents remain the incumbent carriers in pockets around the country.
For more history and info about the phone companies, check out www.teletruth.org.
And of course, all of that is completely separate from the wireless carriers. The history of that is much more complicated, but of the five now remaining:
Cingular is owned by SBC (60%) and Bell South (40%)
Verizon is owned by Verizon (which is 45% owned by Vodafone, a huge UK phone company)
Sprint owns Sprint (obviously)
Nextel is actually an independent company (AFAIK)
T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom
If you're not supporting a huge US corporation, you're helping a huge foreign one instead. Pick your poison.
AT&T has the absolute best backbone and amazing service for businesses. I have an AT&T T-1. It wasn't much more than going through Qwest or a local wholesaler, but they have the best SLA out there (one day credits for 15 minutes of downtime, 65ms latency throughout north america and something like 120ms throughout the world). When Verizon accidentally disconnected my local loop, AT&T was on the phone to me within 5 minutes of the circuit dropping.
No carrier subsidies in China. You buy your phone retail and they cost as much as they do in the US. I don't think GSM has anywhere near 50% penetration in the US, but have not seen specific research.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey