Phone company Shenanigans

[StevenofNine]

OK, so a couple of years ago we took the plunge and got a cell phone. My wife got us an account with AT&T (for those of you outside the US, they're a hugely famous brand name here. They ran ALL TELEPHONE SERVICE in the US until they were broken up by the government as a monopoly.)

AT&T merged with Cingular, and all AT&T Cell accounts were merged to Cingular accounts, since AT&T wanted the Cingular brand name associated with the cell phone line.

This caused all sorts of problems for me, trying to replace one phone with an older one. I bought the phone under AT&T and Cingular couldn't associate it with their SIM cards, so the phone was useless once the merger got to a certain point.

Now, AT&T have announced that the Cingular brand name will be phased out... in favour of AT&T. They apparently feel that cell phones are such a part of life, now, that it's no longer enough to be trendy, they want the weight of AT&T behind them.

Now, I've always liked AT&T as a phone company. When I had many relatives abroad, and I would call them, if I made a mistake dialling, and got Timbuktu rather than Egypt, I could call an AT&T operator and get the charge removed, immediately. But if they start telling me my phone's no good, 6 months from now, because it's Cingular...

Anyone else get thoroughly aggravated with their Cell Company?

[Sharron]

yes, and they lie! lie! lie! lie! can't say enough. I've had the same issue before so has many others. Some phones can be "unlocked" my son had his at&t cell phone unlocked via something or someone he found online. I can't recall now why.

But it can be done.

[webado]

Unlocking officially costs here in Canda $250 and it can only be done by the company whose phone you are using.

You may fidn hackers on the net who'd do it for $50 or so. If you need to send out the phone forget it.

But may I ask ... why bother? Most cell companies give you a pretty good basic (locked of course) phone for free or a really nice one (also locked) for no more than $50.

Considering cell phones seem to self-destruct after a year or two anyway, what's the big deal? I'd not pay to get a cell unlocked only to need to replace it in a few months because it's no longer working anyway. I seem to go through them to the tune of a new one every 18 months or so. Just out of warranty, but not out of the current contract LOL

[StevenofNine]

I do like this new phone trick I've used:

Renew your cell agreement, before the current one ends. Provided you do it at a different reseller, you get the "New Phone" offers.

So, we had Cingular through a Cingular store. We went to Radio Shack, 18 months in to a 24 month agreement. We renewed for another 2 years, so Cingular was happy. To get our business, we got the free and heavily discounted phones from RS.

I got a nice new phone, wife got a great deal on bluetooth for the business.

[NeilB]

Not really sure about this thread cos I think the terminology used in the states differs from the UK. I bought my better half a new mobile phone at Christmas and had it unlocked. The guy who did this service for us used a clip similar to the ones found

http://www.logosunlimited.co.uk/unlocking_clips.htm

I think this is fairly standard practice if you want to put a sim card in from any chosen network and the charge for unlocking in the UK is generally between £5 - £10

Cheers
Neil

[fuzzy]

My wife signed up with SunCom, which became part of AT&T Wireless, which was acquired by Cingular, which will soon become AT&T Wireless again...!

The reason for the AT&T-Cingular-AT&T name switching is a bit different from what I've learned. AT&T Wireless was started by AT&T (the old long distance company), but eventually became a separate company and expanded by buying up several other regional affiliates (e.g. SunCom).

Cingular, on the other hand, was the result of a coordination by several of the growing "baby bells" to unite all their brands (e.g. Ameritech Wireless was what we had around here) under one "Cingular" name :P ... SBC ended up with most of the ownership of Cingular after acquiring the "parent companies" (like Ameritech and PacBell), and then Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless -- at that point, the rights to use the AT&T brand name for wireless (cellular/"mobile") reverted back to AT&T (the long distance company).

AT&T had some plans in the works to offer a new AT&T Wireless service, on the Sprint network. :!:

Then SBC acquired AT&T, and became "The New at&t", and is now in the works to acquire the last remaining regional bell that is the other owner of Cingular, so... it will be called "AT&T Wireless"!!!

Round and round we go...

Of course, my wireless carrier (who shall remain unnamed for the moment) has decided that they want to lose my business rather quickly. With my last contract, I was supposed to get x minutes, which I share with three other lines. But, the boneheads have started charging $.05 a minute on the peak-hours calls for the other three lines! :x I called and had the charges reversed once, but again, they're showing up on my bill... :evil: So they might just go away quickly if they don't fix things for me, which would include a generous extra credit on my bill :twisted:

[fuzzy]

Oh yeah, and then there was PrimeCo...!
www.fuzzyworld3.com/3um/viewtopic.php?t=59

[robinev]

So here's the history:

[We'll call the AT&T that resulted from the divestiture AT&T (NJ) to distinguish it from the current "new" AT&T which was previously called SBC.]

AT&T (NJ) bought the pioneer cell company McCaw Cellular and renamed it AT&T Wireless (AWE). It was headquartered in Redmond, WA where McCaw had started.

AT&T (NJ) eventually spun off AWE into a vaguely separate company, but maintained more control than most folks in Redmond felt comfortable with.

While AWE mostly sat around and watched, Verizon (nee Bell Atlantic and GTE) and Cingular (jointly owned by SBC and Bell Atlantic) were aggressive in building their networks.

All of the companies introduced new network technologies that required (in most cases) a different handset, but most of them continued to operate both their old and new networks.

All the while, AWE lost market share while Verizon and Cingular got bigger. Eventually the NJ masters of AWE decided their best bet was to fold. They sold the company to Cingular (i.e. to SBC and BellSouth). Cingular shut down the Redmond HQ and moved AWE operations to Atlanta and rebranded from "AT&T Wireless" to "Cingular."

Since AWE had been slower in introducing next-gen networks in some places, Cingular was now stuck with a bigger old-gen network, plus the huge cost of the cash they'd paid out to buy AWE. To get rid of the old-gen network more quickly, they tried to switch folks over to the newer networks and new contracts.

Meanwhile, the folks in New Jersey who had sold AWE decided their best bet with AT&T (NJ) itself was to sell the whole outfit. SBC (of San Antonio, TX) was the highest bidder. Although SBC had bought AT&T, their marketing folks decided that AT&T was the better name, so they switched their corporate moniker.

But the new AT&T also wanted more control over the cell network that they jointly owned with BellSouth. How to do that? Well, they bought BellSouth which means that the former SBC (now AT&T) owns all of Cingular. And their marketing folks have once again told them that AT&T is the better name, so they'll readopt the AT&T Wireless name (or something similar) that they'd spent millions to get rid of so recently.

And -- while all this is happening -- the books of AT&T get gargantuan debt added to it, but it's a Texas company now and some of those folks don't seem to care much about huge debts.

[[Verizon Wireless, by the way, is jointly owned by Verizon and Vodaphone (http://www.vodafone.com/), but controlled by Verizon which is reportedly getting antsy to own the whole thing. In other words, we haven't seen the end of all this.]]

[webado]

Oy! My head! My head!

[rotarysteve]

Sure glad I don't have a cell phone yet. Still depend on a very old pager......

[trackerm]

Sure glad I don't have a cell phone yet. Still depend on a very old pager......


Goodness. You'll be buying a computer soon.

[Sharron]

Goodness. You'll be buying a computer soon.

Mark, Steve's already made that plunge! Or I think I remember his contemplation of doing so!

[rotarysteve]

Mark, Steve's already made that plunge! Or I think I remember his contemplation of doing so!

Lol.....

Yes indeed, finally retired that old 1997 model for a 2006 model. Actually the 1997 model retired itself for me. Something about the HD going kaput's. Both of my 1980-82 trs-80 model III's still run, the older one with 16k ram and cassette player for program storage, and the 64k ram with dual 5 1/4 floppy drives..... Wonder if there worth anything yet as antiques???? lol, doubt that.....

[robinev]

Oy! My head! My head!
Exactly. But the thread title is "Phone company shenanigans." What scares me is that I somehow remember so much about the shenanigans. Oy. My head! No more room!

[webado]

Oy-oy then! :lol: