The Unofficial Cingular Weblog

I can't say I frequent the forums at PhoneScoop all that much but I can say that theres a good mix of people who are completely clueless, and like all forums a good amount of people who could spend the better part of their lives arguing over the chicken and egg issue.

The latest argument has been over the name change from SBC to AT&T, and how that will affect Cingular Wireless. An interview of the SBC CEO by USA Today leads some to believe that the Cingular brand is going to be replaced by the defunct AT&T Wireless brand.

I must say it all just seems rather contrived. Yes the AT&T name has better recognition... it should as it is as old as telephone history. But here are my problems with this.

1. If SBC really thought the ATTWS name was the all its cracked up to be, they would have bought it from ATT at the time of the merger. But they didn't.. they leased it for six months.

2. Cingular is in the middle completing the common service experience initiative. Making service and sales equal across both halves of the company, Legacy Blue and Legacy Orange. If Cingular was to rebrand as ATTWS but still be available in some markets as Cingular... how would that provide a common service experience?

3. With around 2000 company owned retail stores, and agents bringing the number up to the tens of thousands..(radioshack alone will add around 5000 more in 06) thats ALOT of rebranding. Most Agent locations shouldnt have a problem, but there are a good number of stores where branding is Cingular inside and out, right down to the shape of the furniture. So this all means alot of money. Unless SBC is going to pay for it, I wouldn't imagine the CWA would be happy with the fact that Cingular just laid off hundreds of employees only to spend millions on rebranding a couple of months later.

4. The name change will have little effect on existing customers. But how will potential customers react to the brand schizophrenia? Cingular is liable to become the Palm of wireless carriers. Frequent name changes give the aura of a lack of credibility. It carries the connotation that the company did something wrong, and is changing their name to make people forget... remember ValuJet -- AirTran? Is that something Cingular can afford? -- Verizon is still posting greater net customer gains since the merger. Brand name stability implies company stability, and Verizon has Cingular beat there.

Just for fun lets track all the name changes shall we?

• 1880 Pacific Bell name adopted for west coast operations
• 1885 American Telephone and Telegraph name adopted by Ma Bell
• 1889 PacBell name droped in favor of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph
• 4/1920 Southwestern Bell name adopted for AT&T Local operations in TX, OK, AK, KA, MS.
• 1983 AT&T along with Ameritech launches the first commerical US cellular system in Chicago.
• 1984 Pacific Telesis brings back Pacific Bell
• 1984 Court order splits AT&T up into seven RBOCs, AT&T forms new company with LD service, manufacturing, and R&D
• 1984 Houston Cellular brand established as a partnership between AT&T and BellSouth
• 1993 Ilinois Bell, Indiana Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell and Wisconson Bell all owned by Ameritech make it official by going with a single brand name.
• 1993 AT&T Merges with McCraw Cellular largest cell provider at the time, and rebrands as AT&T Wireless
• 1994 American Telephone and Telegraph goes abstract with AT&T Corp.
• 1995 Southwestern Bell Corp abbreviates to SBC Communications
• 9/20/1995 AT&T splits into AT&T, NCR (which has been purchased only four years prior with the same name), and Lucent Technologies (which later splits in to two companies itself)
• 1997 SBC purchases Pacific Bell & Nevada Bell
• 1998 AT&T Merges with TCI cable company
• 1999 SBC Purchases Ameritech
• 2000 AT&T Merges with MediaOne cable company… brands it as AT&T Broadband. AT&T Reorganizes into two separate companies, ATTWS, ATTBB
• 2000 SBC and Bellsouth sign joint-venture 60/40 agreement to form Cingular Wireless merging Pacific Bell Wireless, Nevada Bell Wireless, Southwestern Bell Wireless, SNET Wireless, and Ameritech Cellular and the then Cellular One network. (The Cellular one that exists today is just a service mark of Western Wireless) Houston Cellular assumes the name of Cingular Wireless
• 2001 ATTWS becomes its own company, ATTBB is sold to Comcast
• 9/1/2001 SBC Hopes to transition brand name changes by appending existing regional bell names to the SBC name.
• 12/11/2002 SBC becomes an abstract following in the lines with Verizon and The Artist Formerly known as Prince, to no longer mean Southwestern Bell Corp., and additionally puts Ameritech and PacBell to rest.
• 10/26/2004 Cingular Wireless purchases AT&T Wireless for $41 billion dollars, and is ordered to divest a few markets, selling them off to the highest bidders, including competitors such as Altel
• 11/21/2005 SBC Rebrands as ATT Inc. post-buyout of ATT Corp for 16 billion bringing the death star one step closer to world domination.
• 11/21/2005 Speculation runs rampant on PhoneScoop forums whether or not AT&T will rebrand Cingular services as well -- all based on a jaded writeup of an interview of one CEO by USA Today, without any corroborated reports from other news sources. While readers at PhoneScoop have their heads up their asses a spokesperson from BellSouth counters the rumors by stating that “The Cingular name is not changing, as far as I understand it. They are going to resell their Cingular service under the AT&T name, and I think this will be among their large business customers.”

Sources; Wikipedia (Cingular, AT&T), The Bell System Memorial, The Wayback Machine, The Red Herring, AT&T History

Update 11/21: Official Q&A information directly from Cingular concerning the USA Today article:

"Will Cingular be changing its name to AT&T Wireless?

No. Cingular has been, is, and will remain a national brand.

What has changed for Cingular?

AT&T's plans will not change the way we market or manage Cingular. Even today, when BellSouth and AT&T sell wireless services as part of a bundle of wired and wireless services, the customer receives a bill from BellSouth or AT&T - not from Cingular. Most importantly, if either BellSouth or AT&T purchases wireless services from Cingular and markets them under another name, the results still show up in our balance sheet and are beneficial to Cingular. Gross adds - by any name - show up on Cingular's bottom line."

More to come including a clarification from Stan Sigman.