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Cingular-AT&T Wireless Merger Complete
bigmase521 writes "PRNNewsWire, Phonescoop.com, and this thread on Howardforums.com, are reporting that the Cingular/AT&T Wireless Merger is now complete. Cingular bought out AT&T Wireless for ~$41B to become the nations largest cellular provider. Details of the merger, and full press coverage, including the audio of this afternoon's conference call can be found here, and Cingular and AT&T customers can see what is/isn't changing for them at newcingular.com."
I have AT&T, and the area I live in (Los Angeles County) has lots of Cingular zones. Whenever my phone in on a Cingular network, I have to dial the area code of people I am trying to reach who are in the same area code as me. If you try to just dial the number without the area code, Cingular says it cant connect.
This just happened to me again today, so this merger may be complete business-wise, but there are still bugs to work out of the network.
Vonal Declosion
Funny thing, back then Ma-Bell was broken down for anti-trust reasons, now all these giants are bigger than what Bell Labs ever was.
And they are all merging. That's a very scary thought.
I think a few years from now, almost all the business will be controlled by just a few corporations.
I personally am not sure if that would be a good idea, that would certainly put smaller companies and businesses out, and these would not stand a chance against the big corporations.
Not too sure how I feel about this.
The rationale of this move, according to an analysis of the merger done by Businessweek at0 4/nf20041026_3765_db016.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct20
"The Atlanta-based carrier has landed exclusive rights to the new Motorola Razr V3 and the Sony Ericsson se710a. Both are high-end multimedia phones expected to lure sophisticated buyers. The Motorola Razr is a design triumph. It's just a half-inch thick when closed. Open, it's as thin as a Q-Tip. Yet it manages to pack in a VGA camera with 4x zoom, 3D graphics capability, and 22 kilohertz polyphonic speaker technology."
Its merger with AT&T Wireless will give Cingular 47.6 million subscribers, catapulting it past the 41 million customers that current market leader Verizon Wireless has. But that status might not last long unless Cingular can keep subscribers from bolting to Verizon and others. Cingular is plagued by above-average customer defections. [...] its churn rate edged up from 2.7% in the second quarter to 2.8% in the third, while Verizon's is hovering around a more wholesome 1.5%.
Mergers are dangerous : you gain benefits (in this case, exclusive handhelds and a big subscriber base), but can go wrong. Only time will tell if the benefits outweighted the disadvantages in this case.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I must cay, as an AT&T cuctomer, I feel ctrange today...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My wife (boy, it feels strange to say that) is from Canada, and before we got married, I used to call up there all the time. I recently renewed my contract w/ ATTWS, because as recently as Sept., ATTWS was the only mobile provider I could find that offered a plan allowing the user toll-free calling to .ca and no roaming while there, either. I didn't want to renew after the merger, and risk not having that option available to me.
It used to be an extra $20 a month, then when I switched to GSM, they'd lowered it to $10. Now I think it's only like $7/mo, which is a real bargain. I think it's called their "North America" plan or something, now.
Just a heads up for those who might find such a service useful. I've been asking for a few months now at both ATTWS and Cingular stores whether the new company would offer a similar plan, but no one knew for sure.
"Cingular and AT&T customers can see what is/isn't changing for them at newcingular.com" It looks like for both services, nothing at all will change except a new name on the AT&T bills (the AT&T customers will get a change if they switch their calling plans). As an ardent cell phone geek, I've spent time with both companies - two years with AT&T, and now going on one with Cingular. Both companies were pretty much the same. Same service (great), same wonderfully geek-satisfying equipment (as opposed to Verizon with some really cheap crappy stuff, wholly absent of Nokia and Sony Ericsson), and almost same plans and prices. Very minor differences even there. The newcingular site claims that the end user will literally sense no change. If that's true, I'm staying with Cingular for a long, long, looooooong time. They already rock.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
What's frustrating for me is that a few weeks before they first announced this, I, having been COMPLETELY FED UP with Cingular and their terrible, possibly unethical billing practices, I decided to drop them mid-contract and signed up w/ AT&T.
I just can't win.
Engineering and the Ultimate
...but I couldn't help it. I went to the website and clicked the "I'm an AT&T customer" (I recently left Cingular for AT&T).
They had a list of bullet points and then a whole page devoted to how much better my life is going to be after this merger. I swear, there were about 64 kilobytes of text devoted to listing all the positives of this merger.
That's when it struck me that companies really need to read the Cluetrain Manifesto. I really would be interested in the six worst things that are going to happen to me, so that I can be prepared for it.
Take, for example, when I first signed up with AT&T. Plan: $65/month all told. First bill comes. $300. WTF? Everything that could go wrong, did. They put me on the wrong plans. They didn't count my mobile-to-mobile minutes. They signed me up for about 17 extra plans I didn't need or ask for. Not to mention that "Federal fund recovery fee" which is essentially AT&T's way of saying "How come restaurants get to charge you 15% extra for tips, and we don't??? Oh, wait. We do. We'll just charge a tip on every bill. Nice."
Now Cingular is going to take this bumblefuck of a corporation and incorporate it into its everyday operations.
And things are going to go smoothly? I don't think so.
This is Tweedle-dee meets Tweedle-dum, and they're in charge of your critical wireless communications. Be prepared to be pissed off.
fifth sigma, inc.
Here's one (very long) experience.
I just signed up for a new phone with my carrier, AT&T. I chose a refurbished Nokia phone (a 6820, if it matters). When it arrived, two of the buttons were completely broken and one more was hard to push. This made using the menus (and thus the phone) pretty much impossible. I called in and after a brief discussion, they told me they were going to ship me a replacement phone of the same model (still refurbished).
It arrived the next day. This time, all the buttons worked, but when I tried to access the phone's IM (instant messaging) feature, it popped up a Java error. Now this is when I got a real taste of customer service.
I called them and explained the whole situation (how I just signed up and how the first phone I got was broken so I needed a replacement, and how the replacement was broken too). The guy then put me on hold (the first of many, many holds) while he looked into the situation. When he got back, he started to walk me through the AIM-via-text-message setup procedure, which is something completely different. I explained to him that I don't think he and I were talking about the same thing, and that the first phone I got did not have this Java error. But apparently, that info was all he could find. Apparently, their databases didn't even have an entry for the IM menu on my phone, so he had no idea what I was talking about.
I suggested to him that it seemed to be a software/firmware problem with the phone since the first one didn't have the problem, and I asked him if they could simply ship me another replacement like they did the first time. But he said no, they were all out of stock on that phone (but I just ordered it three days ago...?). After putting me on hold some more, he told me to go to a local AT&T Wireless retail store to "get the phone re-flashed".
So I did. I found an AT&T Wireless retailer, but the lady there had apparently never seen the problem before. When I explained that customer service told me to go and get it re-flashed at her store, she just gave me a blank stare and asked "Reflashed? What's that?". Then we spoke to another guy at the same store, possibly a manager, and he said "Oh, wow... you need some high-tech stuff to do that. USB cables and such. We don't do that here." The lady chimed in, "In fact... none of the AT&T Wireless stores do." Then I asked why Customer Service sent me to them, and they didn't know either.
So when I got home, I called customer service again and explained the whole situation all over again. This time, the technician on the line didn't know what re-flashing was either. He said it was a very strange suggestion for the original tech to have made. Then I asked him whether he could just ship me a replacement. He said no, they were out of stock. Then I told him that they were still available at the webpage, so they did have some phones left, and I asked if he could please check to make sure. He put me on hold for a while to talk to his manager, and when he got back, he told me that they didn't ship replacements out like that. I asked him how I got the first replacement, then, but he couldn't explain it. He did suggest, however, that I can go online and order another phone and they would pricematch it after I was billed. I told him my credit card's limit wasn't that high and so that wasn't an option. Then he just told me to call Warranty Exchange. I just thanked him and gave up for the night.
Annoyed at the entire situation, I ignored it for few more days. I finally called back a few days later. This time, I was sick of explaining everything so I just asked the tech to look at my account notes. She did, and thought about it some. Then, to my surprise, she actually sympathized with the situation and offered to ship me a free replacement phone -- a new one this time, since the past two refurbished ones were both broken. I didn't ask for it; she just offered. I was glad, of course, but then she looked up the phone and foun
Whatever happened to the reasonable sounding conspiracy theory that AT&T Wireless bungled their CRM upgrade last year in order to sell the company? Upper management overrode their IT dept's plan for a gradual, piecemeal upgrade that would allow fallback and concurrent use of the older rev of Siebel. Instead, they were ordered to whack it in across the board and grab the oh shit handles.
I run the SGSNs, GGSN's, DHCP and DNS, so I have a nice viewpoint of the merger.
AWS built out EDGE before Cingular.
AWS has the larger data network with more coverage.
AWS has more RAN hardware than cingular.
AWS launched UMTS, Cingular said they would continue it.
AWS launched global roaming before everyone else.
AWS has the largest wap/mmode content around.
AWS has location based services, wifi, and many other services.
AWS has many of the fortune 500 companies as customers.
AWS Hired an outsourcing VP 2 years ago, they ran IT into the ground, crippled customer support. Customer support use to be live, you could get people to fix your issues, it was going the way of automation and lower paid support centers. Then they started forcing contracts and fucked up billing for customers, no wonder usnet has tons of complaints.
The thing that pissed me off, they ran the company into the ground. Then the CEO's take almost 90 million each, while every employee that bought stock lost money. (Buy at 29, Cingular pays 15)
Our CEO's hired the worst marketing firm in history, fluffy sheep anyone? I wanted to see a damn van fully loaded with RF gear, pull over and leave the "Can you hear me now" guy in dust. We do drive tests all over. Cant hire enough people quick enough to expand the network. (BTS Vendors, thats a post in itself...)
Sad, it was a great company they ran into the ground to make CEO money and split. I started there 6 years ago after the mccaw buyout, been in operations ever since.
Top if off, Cingular has been calling our network substandard to theirs. Who are they joking? I talk to the same freaking vendors...
I'm not even going to post anonymous.