Cingular

Most of you have seen the common Cingular commercial which basically shows that Cingular has merged with AT&T and now they're raising the bars.

Cingular used to be a simple phone company just starting out in the game. However, they had other plans in mind for expanding.

On October 26, 2004 Cingular bought out AT&T for $41 billion which was approved by the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission.

They needed consent from both these bureau's because they were about to form the biggest cellular telephone company in the nation. This would definitely drive out a ton of other competitors. That's why Cingular had to agree to the following terms:

Cingular and AT&T Wireless must sell airwave licenses, customer contracts and other assets in 11 states to ensure that rivals can provide competing service.

A pretty decent proposal considering how huge they will be!

They did have a bit of a rocky transfer and were busy moving all of the AT&T clients over to the new Cingular plan which has rollover minutes which let you keep unused minutes to the next month!

The Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America and other consumer organizations weren't so happy about this merger. They predicted that this would lead into higher prices in the cellular market (and they were kind of right from what I see). They also believed that Cingular would prevent companies like BellSouth or T-Mobile from competing.

Cingular mostly uses the GSM Network (Global System for Mobile Communications) while AT&T used the TDMA Network (Time Division Multiple Access).

To use one network, you would need a pre-defined phone which has been configured to use that certain type of network. That was why AT&T phones wouldn't work with a lot of other networks, they used TDMA Networks. Obviously other phones couldn't be used with the AT&T Network unless they used the TDMA Network.

Those who were on AT&T plans are allowed to continue using their AT&T plan for as long as they wish. This meant that they wouldn't be using Cingular's GSM Network, but instead AT&T's old TDMA Network. Since you can't use both, Cingular has to keep running the old network.

But they have stopped letting people sign up for AT&T (obviously) and prevented any more users to run on the old TDMA Network.

However, if an AT&T customer decide to change over to Cingular, guess what they'll get? A new Cingular phone which runs on the GSM Network! A smart idea.

Within a couple of years most customers would have either switched or cancelled their AT&T Plans and Cingular will be converting completely to the GSM Network.

This transition was a bit hard to implement, but they seem to have pulled through!

You had to have seen the commercials when the sleek new Motorola Razr came out. You would have thought that considering how old and not stylish the old Motorola phones were, I personally thought they would have sold out by now.

But they pulled the Motorola Razr out ar the last second and somehow survived. Not only did they make and sell the leading cell phone at the time, they also struck a deal with the devil, Cingular.

Cingular basically knew that the Motorola Razr was a big hit and they weren't partners with any other cellular phone company. So they took advantage of the opportunity and partnered up.

A few weeks later Cingular offered Motorola Razr phones for around $70 (the original price was around $200 or so) if the customer signs a contract for two years.

This definitely bought in a ton of new customers to Cingular since the Motorola Razr lasted for more than 3 months (in my opinion).

They are also now offering the Motorola Slvr as well, which is basically the same, but not a flip phone.