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Cingular to be re-branded as AT&T???

H

hookahco

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 11, 2005
148
0
To Live n Die in L.A. California
NEW YORK — SBC (SBC), which closed its merger with AT&T on Friday, plans to sell Cingular Wireless under the fabled AT&T name, Ed Whitacre, the chairman and CEO of the combined company, has confirmed to USA TODAY.
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I've been a customer with Cingular since they've been Pacific Bell.. i dont like this re-branding. Why would they buy a company smaller than them and then start selling their products under the failing company's name? It doesnt make sense to me..
what are your thoughts on this?
 
BAD idea. AT&T = old Ma Bell name that no one except Wall Street cares about anymore. Cingular = hip new modern name that's MUCH better.

And yes, I'm a Cingular customer who WAS with AT&T Wireless before they merged.
 
Wasn't AT&T split up many many years ago for being a monopoly or something?


This is almost like T1000 from Terminator 2. Even if shattered into little pieces it still finds a way to merge back.
 
::Sigh:: As long as they don't require another migration service contract. We migrated from AT&T to Cingular, and have been on the phone at least 5 times trying to get their personnel and data systems to talk to each other, even though one is supposed to be the other. Bottom line, I don't care what they call it as long as the service is good and the cost doesn't go through the roof.
 
It makes perfect sense. AT&T is a more recognizable name. It's like if ACME Cartoon Co bought Disney. What would you call the new company? There have been many mergers in the last few years, but it goes something like this: Cingular is a joint venture between SBC and Bell South. AT&T split it's operations into three different companies (all carrying the AT&T name): Wireless, Telephone, Cable. The cable outfit is the first to be sold. Cingular merges with AT&T Wireless. SBC Merges with AT&T (telephone). SBC sells it's half of Cingular. However, if SBC is going to be called AT&T, then why is Cingular going to be called that as well?
 
Cingular is such a cooler name than AT&T though, I really have no idea what is going on now. Can I have a link to the article about this, please?
 
engadget has an article (and extensive comments) that breaks down the whole history of ATT/Bell/Cingular
 
maybe they're trying to capture the geek market or the apple market (at&t invented unix).
"OMGWTFBBQ MY PHONEZ0RZ IS 7EH SAME AS MY C0MPUT@R" (i couldnt do any exclamation points as my one key is broken :/ )
 
OnceUGoMac said:
SBC sells it's half of Cingular. However, if SBC is going to be called AT&T, then why is Cingular going to be called that as well?
Click to expand...
Cingular was basically the smaller local companies joining to form cingular, When SBC bought up the small local bell companies they inherited the cingular name, If you buy the bundle service of SBC Cingular and Dish Network you are getting one bill form SBC so calling everything one name would make more sense and cause less confusion.
 
Now, ATT wireless and AT&T telecom were separate companies, being called AT&T wireless was a different brand name from the big Bell AT&T, so Cingular never bought AT&T but AT&T wireless, does that make sense.
 
treblah said:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000650069010/

Apparently some sort of miscommunication from SBC to USAToday. Long story short: SBC will become AT&T, Cingular stays but in a few select markets Cingular will again be called AT&T Wireless.
Click to expand...

Ah, that makes more sense. My best friend's dad works at Cingular, so I was surprised I didn't find out about the whole AT&T thing, but it seems it doesn't affect Cingular that much. Which is good, because I love the orange Jack logo.
 
MacNut said:
Cingular was basically the smaller local companies joining to form cingular, When SBC bought up the small local bell companies they inherited the cingular name
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Sorry, but this is not quite right. Cingular was once known as BellSouth PCS; it was BellSouth's entry into the cellular market. BellSouth spun the company off and it was renamed to Cingular. Cingular was NEVER a "phone company"; they've always been purely a cellular company.
 
clayj said:
Sorry, but this is not quite right. Cingular was once known as BellSouth PCS; it was BellSouth's entry into the cellular market. BellSouth spun the company off and it was renamed to Cingular. Cingular was NEVER a "phone company"; they've always been purely a cellular company.
Click to expand...
In CT it was known as SNET Wireless (Southern NewEngland Telephone) then changed, I think more regional cell companies joined to form Cingular. But I could be wrong. All I know is I paid bills to both.

Ok so I did some digging and found this link.
http://cingular.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=792
the Cingular name unites 11 brands and 20 million customers brought together
through a joint venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth.
Click to expand...
 
My only issue is the the new logo. What is the deal with the tilted/3D globe and the lower case letters. I could understand if they wanted to use the new image to distinguish from the other AT&T entities, but the lowercase looks retarded.
 
treblah said:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000650069010/

Apparently some sort of miscommunication from SBC to USAToday. Long story short: SBC will become AT&T, Cingular stays but in a few select markets Cingular will again be called AT&T Wireless.
Click to expand...

It's kind of funny--like one of those Escher drawings where a circle of fish is eating the one in front of it.

Anyway, remember that ATT Wireless did well with businesses, so the brand name carries value at least there. On the other hand, Cingular is where they've been putting all the promotion lately.

It may be that the new ATT/SBC starts marketing an ATTWirless brand but mainly to business customers. rest assured it will all be the same system.

(and I'd guess the select markets are those that were divested in the cingular merger, and the rights to the cingular name belong to someone else.
 
treblah said:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000650069010/

Apparently some sort of miscommunication from SBC to USAToday. Long story short: SBC will become AT&T, Cingular stays but in a few select markets Cingular will again be called AT&T Wireless.
Click to expand...

I never believe companies when they say things like this. These type of statements are used to appease people at first. Then, they will come out after they introduce the AT&T name and say, "We need to create a more unified brand." They will either totally get rid of the Cingular name or totally keep it. It will get confusing having some markets with one name and some without.

Its just like BP/Amoco...when they first merged, they said they'd keep the Amoco name. Now, only Amoco gas is branded, but the Amoco name has disappeared from the company name and station names.
 
mac-er said:
I never believe companies when they say things like this. These type of statements are used to appease people at first. Then, they will come out after they introduce the AT&T name and say, "We need to create a more unified brand." They will either totally get rid of the Cingular name or totally keep it. It will get confusing having some markets with one name and some without.
Click to expand...
i would think this re-branding would waste a lot of money that CingularAT&T spent on advertising america's largest mobile phone company under the name Cingular.
Whatever they name it.. it will still be lagging behind European and Middle Eastern GSM networks. How come nobody over here has heard of UMTS???
 
This is kinda old news but it brought to mind Ecclesiates 3. There is no new thing under the sun...

Cingular was part of bell south. Bell south was part of AT&T. AT&T user to have all the local and long distance phone service in the US. In 60s MCI(nee worldcom nee MCI)started up. Then came Sprint. AT&T had 75% of the long distance(give or take) when it was forcibly split into 7 regional phone companies who handle local phone calls, AT&T which was to handle long distance and Lucent which was Bell Labs (Who not only did Unix but also the transistor and an boat load of other things.) and had rights to make the equipment.

We are now down to 2 baby bells and AT&T again and the shell that is Lucent.

Sad or funny, your call.
 
Customer Service

This is just speculation but perhaps the move is aimed to escape the bad cusotmer service reputation that Cingular had/has. I for one had cingular as my first cell phone company and was sooo very frustrated by the fact that their then amazing "unlimited nights and weekends" plan resulted in me not being able to make a call after 8pm due to the overloaded network. Even worse was the customer service that I recieved. After numerous phone calls and pleas for help, I switched to ATT and swore never to return to cingular as did many people I went to college with. I remember their being petitions everywhere on campus and on the internet.

Anyway, I doubt many people hold a grudge as long as I do but given the fact that cingular never has been seen as having the best customer service, perhaps its a smart move to switch brands in those markets where Cingular suffers?
 
AT&T wireless was the most deceitful company around. When I signed up for a wireless plan for them, they told me I didn't have to pay for roaming, and on the brochure, under the column "roaming" it said "included in national coverage area." Therefore, you would think, as long as you had service, you wouldn't have to pay a roaming fee.
Later, I found out that, what that really meant was, as long as I was in certain areas I wouldn't have to pay roaming fees. Once I read the fine print, it was $.69 a minute! :eek: I was so mad! Within the week my contract ended I switched providers. Of course now I have Verizon and can't get a good phone! :mad:
 
Yeah really, AT&T Wireless had the worst reputation in cellular. Bad as it was, their service got even worse after Cingular bought them. I'm cancelling as soon as the *(&^&^% contract expires.

As far as SBC changing to AT&T, that may be enough for me to decide to disconnect my landline. AT&T, the company that couldn't sell eternal life, the company whose supreme arrogance finally led to the government-enforced breakup, the company who resisted competition by all means fair and foul. SBC changing their name to AT&T is more akin to GM buying Ford and changing their name to Edsel. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 
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