Cingular wireless

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Cingular Wireless has today become the largest mobile phone company in the United States. Cingular is actually a joint venture of the American landline telephone companies SBC and BellSouth. In this venture, SBC owns 60% and BellSouth owns the other 40%.

After another communication giant AT&T fell in to troubled times, Cingular won regulatory approval from the FCC to acquire AT&T Wireless in October 2004. In the deal, Cingular acquired 24 million customers of AT&T, which was about 50% of their own customer base. This enables them to cross Verizon?s figures and become the leading player in the market. And this figure has been growing since then. In fact, according to July 2005 figures, the number of customers has increased to 51.6 million.

The company has various types of networks such as GSM, TDMA and AMPS. While the GSM network has been taken from Pacific Bell Wireless and BellSouth, TDMA and AMPS has been taken from SBC. Cingular is now also able to support EDGE data services ? this became a reality since the company took over AT&T.

In this highly competitive market, it is necessary to constantly evolve and come up with new things. Understanding this reality, Cingular Wireless plans to launch the UMTS or W-CDMA high-speed network in 2006. Analysts feel that this is aimed to counter Verizon's Ev-DO network.

In California, Nevada, New Jersey and also in New York City, Cingular and T-Mobile used to share a GSM-1900 network, through a joint venture that was referred to as GSM Facilities. This network sharing agreement allowed Cingular to offer local services in the northern areas of New Jersey and New York City. T-Mobile on the other hand was able to offer their services in California and Nevada. However in May 2004, Cingular and T-Mobile dissolved this agreement when Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless.