AT&T wireless and Cingular wireless

Cingular had made a bid to merge with AT&T, The shareholders approved the merger on the 19th, and now we are waiting for the approval/denial from the FCC & DOJ, which should be by Oct or Nov. Untill then Cingular & AT&T are 2 seperate companies competing for customers untill everything is approved. I don't think it will be denied as well as numerous others so they should become 1 company by the end of the year. Hope this helps un-confuse you

 

In general, yes. In places where they overlap, they will probably turn off one of the towers in order to cut costs (no need for panels of both providers on the same tower) but they will combine coverage areas.

 

Yes. The entire network footprint will be combined. However, this won't start happening until soon after the merger is closed and it might take sometime to complete across the country. Customers from one of the two companies will experience better/stronger service where the other is stronger, but if they already are with the strongest of the two, they will see little to no benefit. For instance, Cingular customers will experience better service where AT&T is stronger (such as North NJ), but AT&T customers will see little to no immediate improvement. Likewise, Cingular customers will see little to no improvement in areas where they are stronger than AT&T (such as in CT/MA).

Long term benefits will include less busy towers, less dropped calls and improved call quality as a result of more spectrum available.

 

I'm in NY City area. From what I hear, people are least satisfied with AT&T as a wireless company. As far as RF is concerned people say VZW is the best, then Sprint/T-Mobile/Cingular then AT&T. Do you agree and do you think this will change once the merger is complete. I am really trying to stay with VZW but there customer service and phones sucks so bad it makes me want to leave.

 

I am in NJ, and tried Verizon and had too many problems that i took the phone back. I am on the GSM system and have very good to excellent coverage where i go, only 1 place i am still having a problem, but once the complete the 850 control channels being turned on by the end of June i don't expect to have the problem. This is also happening in NY and i do notice if i have 1 bar, and make a call i get full bars and the call goes thru fine. This is due to 850 channels being on from what i am gathering. Also i have found the CS and phones to be very good, and once the merger happens things may get even better.