AT&T To Replace Cingular Brand Monday

[Rocco Augusto]

http://www.computerworld.com/action...rc=news_ts_head

"AT&T Wireless was once an independent company that had been spun off from AT&T Corp. Cingular Wireless LLC bought the wireless operator and eliminated the AT&T Wireless brand. Then SBC, one of the owners of Cingular, bought AT&T, adopting the AT&T brand for its landline services. More recently, AT&T bought BellSouth Corp., the other owner of Cingular, spurring the switch back to the AT&T brand for the wireless service. Now that AT&T is the parent company of several telecommunications brands, it is consolidating the branding under the AT&T name as a way of cutting costs. AT&T estimates that 20% of the operating expenses it expects to save through the merger with BellSouth will come from consolidating advertising."



I wasn't too attached to the Cingular name so I will not be heartbroken to see it fade away. The good news is, since all of the AT&T Wireless customers were finally migrated to the Cingular billing system, there should be no interruptions in service. As much as I love Cingular's service, I don't think I could go through that much torture again.

Source: peterawest
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[Kris Kumar]

I wish they had kept the Cingular name.

I think Cingular had put in a lot of effort into establishing a brand name. Plus the effort involved and the money needed to change store signs, brochures, advertisements, labels on the phones and invoices etc is huge, its enormous.

I think the money paid by the subscribers is well spent on enhancing the network, I mean deploying HSDPA/3G network. I am sure this name change is going to affect the subscribers regardless of what AT&T says. I don't think either name has a better goodwill than the other.
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[MitchellO]

I have to say that I think that the name Cingular is a lot nicer than AT&T :p
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[dstrauss]

Personally, the name doesn't make any difference to me, but to a lot of folks, they "know" AT&T but still wonder what "Cingular" is. It's kind of like Coke vs. RC Cola.

[Jerry Raia]

I prefer the Cingular name and wish they would just put tthe ATT moniker to sleep forever. I also like the Cingular logo better too.
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[Jason Dunn]

Cingular: new, hip, cool
AT&T: old, busted, '70s

The people making this decision do NOT understand branding. AT&T might resonate with grandma, but are there more grandmas buying phones than younger people? Probably not. Cingular built up a lot of brand recognition over the past few years, and A&T just screams "old school legacy".

Bad, bad decision that no doubt has T-Mobile giggling with glee.

[macattack]

[Jerry Raia]

Let's not forget the ATT brand represents failure. I remember when they didn't want to invest in cellular because they did think it would go anywhere.
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[dougben50]

I remember when I had service through Voice Stream in 2001. They were made to give up some of their area in Texas and I got AT&T as my new service. They promised that no major changes would happen, but then everyone on Voice Stream was required to go the one of the AT&T local outlets and turn in our phones for one of theirs. This would not have been a bad thing, but I had a phone that was a cut above what they were giving out. I was informed that if I wanted a different model, I would have to pay for it, which I did. The service was so bad, I closed my account within 2 months.
Saying all of this, I hope that they are smart enough to use Cingular's backbone and not make everyone turn in phones this time.

[Jerry Raia]

No I think this is just a name change because they have some twisted fetish over the AT&T brand. Still to me that brand represents dinosaurs and failure.
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