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.

Comments

AT&T...

[Infernon]

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...

At least it's GSM...

[winkydink]

albeit at frequencies incompatible with most of the rest of the world.

Re:Another one bites the dust

[Shivaji Maharaj]

Not in the US. If you look at the coverage maps of each provider you will understand the benefits of this deal. A combined map of Cingular and AT & T will provide a larger coverage area for all (new) cingular customers.

Also, with the new Cingular Nation plan - you roam all the available GSM network through out the US with 0 ( zero ) roaming charges. And not to mention the choice of handsets I get. I think this deal will benefit the customer more than it harms.

Competition

[zazas_mmmm]

and the number of competitors for wireless devices in the US is down by one.

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.

Re:Vodafone's stock price...

[perly-king-69]

Not necessarily. Vodafone's stock price jumped 5% this morning because AT&T was, in analysts opinions, overpriced.

Amen!

[nahdude812]

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.

Re:Amen!

[sphealey]

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.

I am happy for you, but my experience with Verizon was just the opposite. I got in a 3-month battle with them over dead spots in one of St. Louis' largest suburbs (average income, average density, average or above average cell phone usage). They WOULD NOT acknowledge that there was a problem (blaming everything from the instrument {which worked fine elsewhere} to sunspots), WOULD NOT send out a signal-strength truck ("What's that sir? We don't have those"), and WOULD lose the trouble ticket every day or two.

I had to threaten to file a formal complaint with the state commerce commission and FCC (funny how ears suddenly perk up when they realize you know the difference between a gripe letter and a formal complaint) to get them to cancel the contract with no fees.

I switched back to AT&T and have been using them ever since. No problems connecting anywhere in North America, including some places I really don't expect to get a signal.

sph

Good news for Apple partnership?

[adzoox]

At MacWorld Expo 2003 The Sony President and Cingular CEO appeared on the stage talking about the wonders of iSync and bluetooth. I think Apple has been sort of waiting for a clear partner for phone service/co branded phone. This might help. I think Apple partnering with Sony/Cingular is a good idea. Currently (at least in my area) AT&T and Cingular are the only ones that offer Sony Ericsson phones = most compatible with bluetooth programs like Romeo and Salling Clicker.

Can you say more layoffs?

[Anonymous Coward]

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'.