Cingular --> AT&T Mobile?

Beware the power of the dark side...

 

ohhh.....with that ancestry......there isnt anything dark about it..........they say they are separate companies but theyre just differen on paper........they may have different employees......but trust me........Embarq ir probably giving them special treatment............when the Sprint/Nextel merger went through i think that the landline spinoff was one of the terms but there wasnt anything in the terms keeping Embarq from giving Sprint Nextel dark fiber at discount price.......unless some politician wants to come along and say something about net neutrality

 

The Verizon/MCI merger was completed some time ago

 

yeah i was a little confused by that statement too but i didnt say anything because i thought their might have been some press coverage that i had missed.........as far as i know.........the new MCI addition to Verizon is now called Verizon Business

 

I thought they were waiting approvals since they announced the merger after the AT&T/BellSouth deal, I could be wrong though but it seems they stopped the time clock on the deal on the FCC's web site.
http://www.fcc.gov/transaction/verizon-mci.html

 

They stopped the clock the day they approved the merger. Scroll down that link you provided. Also, see:

http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2006/page.jsp?itemID=29672197

The merger closed 1/6/06.

 

Thanks Matt, Guess they didn't make as much of a big deal as AT&T did, where AT&T is making everything the same name, Verizon choose to make this another division by naming it Verizon Business.
Sorry for any confusion on my end about this merger.

 

The MCI main center in Northern VA was completely changed to Verizon a few months ago. There is no trace of the word MCI in that area at all.

 

did MCI do local calling or just long distance

 

They di have a small amount in certain areas but over 90% of its business was LD.

 

thats wat i thought........most companies these days are doing both local and LD these days anyway.........that was just helping out Verizon in the long distance business.............do the phone companies need to have special offices set up to process LD calls..........cuz otherwise i would just assume that they were buying MCI for the customers and not for the "hardware"

 

Well I agree with stockscalper that competition is good, but the history of Lucent is something I know a bit about and you have greatly oversimplified it. It wasn't a failure as part of the original AT&T, it was a stable hardware division which was generally considered boring i.e. not high-growth. The hardware division was spun off as Lucent, not because of the court ordered breakup, but in order to sell to the new baby Bells who were reluctant to buy from a competitor. It was not necessarily any leaner or meaner than it had been as a division, but able to show its own profit/loss.

Then during the tech bubble of the late 90s, not only the baby Bells but lots of high-tech start-ups wanted to buy Lucent's products. It became hot and the stock price took off. It was not lean or mean enough to survive the tech downturn of 2001 and went into a prolonged decline until being bought by Alcatel recently.

Jay is right that most AT&T-branded computers were the result of an ill-considered merger. Bigger isn't always better, although that seems to be the trend nowadays.


SW

 

yes they do need specialy equipment as well as lines. I think they call those central stations where the call gets controled from tehre and as to what best rout to send it over. The LD providers have certain contracts which can mean rerouting a call via multiple stations to get the lowest cost possible. So lets say you want to call Bulgaria (an axample only here) and if the call goes direct tehn teh cost could be 20 cents but using the rerout the cost could be as low as 5 cents. Now most of the users are corporate users and when they signe an agreemetn all LD calls are done via them and that is why we had the choice of choosing who our LD provider can be. For a while we also had the choice (still exists) of who our local provider is and that is where at&t as well as others did and acquired some local business. However, these were basicaly leased via the local phone company and the maintenace was still done by the home company as they own all the lines. many instances where a new service with a none local company is asked for, the local company gave like a 2 week period to do the work and if one called the local company it would have taken 1 or 2 days. The local company played their game to disinterest customers from looking at others.

 

yeah......that part i undserstand...........thats how we have Service Electric Cablevision servicing out area but we can still get Comcast or something like that......so when they bought MCI.......Verizon got a lot of equipment with it

 

Well I attribute the split wihtin the Old AT&T to be more of an invetor driven action. What all the finance industry wanted to do back then is to realize teh highest return possible on their stock ownership which is why we ended up seeing a lot of the sub companies being spun out into it is own. AT&T was all wireless, broadband, equipment, computers, software (at limited basis) and it all got sold off so teh investor makes more money and tehy did. But now it seems that all of this is reversing and the old way seems to be the best way.

 

youre right......sometimes.....smaller keeps prices down......like the local regional company in my area IMMIX Wireless.............they offer nationwide plan......long distance and roaming included........39.99..........1250 anytime minutes........unlimited nights weekends and mobile2mobiles..........as well as unlimited text messaging.........the only thing wrong with this company......is that they have no data capabilities in their network........but theyre working on a data sharing so that data services will be accessed through Cingular and T-Mobile in the area..........from what i understand so far........the phone would roam to access data and then switch back to the home network when the data session is done........cuz the IMMIX phones are like T-Mobile.......if there is any home network signal.......roaming is out of the question.........or maybe they will just use some dark fiber that Cingular and T-Mobile have in the area........idk........it was supposed to be out by the end of '06........but as of now i have heard nothing from my IMMIX friends.

but anyway....my longwinded story is to point out to you (very indirectly :biggrin that as i said in the beginning of this post.........and like hf1khal said........bigger is definitely not always better

IMMIX has perfect coverage outdoors in every area that they cover.........when your a nationwide provider........you cant focus on a specific company like these regional providers can..........there are so many customers and they arent special anymore.......you dont care for them as much because losing one customer isnt much of a loss in a nationwide carrriers book

 

I wonder how thisis going to turn out with some towns going on free wifi. Would this negate the T mobile wifi hotspots. I beriefly heard on the radio that Long Island could go full free wifi. I can't find the detail but it was on the wcbs 880 news radio.

 

yeah i know a lot of communities like to use the taxes to pay for tourist attractions........its nice when they have like community WiFi........for those who dont have that in their community.........check this out:

Neighbornode

you can turn your regular home broadband network into something that your whole neighborhood can use...........you just get a regular Linksys roauter and download the firmware and install it on your router........there is a bulletin board feature in the firmware so the whole neighborhood can announce things and stuff.........and if you get a bunch of these set up you can bridge them together and get your own UMS setup..........so when your carrier gets that feature you can have perfect service whenever you have WiFi service in your neighborhood..........but as of now it only works on standard Linksys routers........i dont even think they have firmwares for the new MIMO routers or the RangeMax setups

 

Well it looks like they have started adding AT&T to the Cingular site, it has the "Cingular is part of the new AT&T" in the upper left hand corner of the page.

www.cingular.com

 

Well you can also see that the go phone mark is also in the transformation process. 3 colors as compared to Orange only, So we might see the blue color side soon.

 

That's interesting, I wonder why they picked a green in between the 2 main colors?

 

I was wondering too and I can't seem to figure it out.

 

I can't see it.. is it just me? Can you take a screen shot to see please?

 

i hope that isn't all they ploan on doing cuz i expected something more drastic........like color changes........but i like the layout........they just need to change logos titles and site layout colors

 

This is the graphic they stuck into the top left corner:

 

Here it is.

 

yes the at is the one that i seee. For any one to get teh refresh just make sure that your IE checks for new web pages. When i did the link above it went to the home landing page wich had 2 options personal or business with teh info in there Cingular is now AT&T. After that it goes the defualt second main page (once you enter your zip code)

 

The Cingular Forums now have the logo above. it was not there around 3 am.

 

Actually, Cingular had the green and orange theme in their printed materials for prepaid, for quite some time. There was also an earlier version 64k SIM chip that was half orange and half green, on one side.

 

I think the transition is going to happen quicker than we think.