TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Cingular - AT&T ?

Re: Cingular - AT&T ?

John L (johnl@iecc.com)
Wed, 9 May 2007 05:13:54 UTC

TELECOM Digest Editor noted in a response:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although Cingular was never an
> independent company, I think its roots were in the old Southwestern
> Bell Mobility in the 1980's. PAT]

Cingular was an LLC owned 60/40 by SBC and Bellsouth. SBC was the
company formerly known as Southwestern Bell, but they changed the name
to their stock ticker symbol SBC as they bought and absorbed PacTel,
Ameritech, SNET, and some other stuff I don't remember.

Quite a while ago, AT&T bought Craig McCaw's cellular properties and
rebranded them as AT&T. In keeping with AT&T's londstanding policy of
slowly bleeding itself to death, since the wireless properties showed
some promise of being profitable, AT&T spun them off as a separate
company, AT&T Wireless (ATTWS).

A year or two after the spinoff, ATTWS was bought and merged into
Cingular, with all of the former AT&T stuff re-rebranded as Cingular.
The integration from that merger is mostly complete, although there's
still a few places on Cingular's web site where it says to click here
if you're a former ATTWS customer.

Then after that, SBC bought the tired husk that remained of AT&T, and
decided to confuse us all by calling the merged company AT&T, even
though it is a whole lot of SBC and not much AT&T.

Last year, SBC, now AT&T, bought Bellsouth and has been merging it
into the new AT&T. This means that Cingular is now entirely owned by
the new AT&T. Having just finished the expensive process of
re-rebranding all of the former ATTWS properties from AT&T to
Cingular, now they are starting the even more expensive process of
re-re-rebranding Cingular back to AT&T.

Confused yet?

R's,

John

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