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Content Tagged cingular
Use your music (MP3's), photos, pictures, and animations to create ringtones and graphics for free: online, without needing software for your computer. Supports most popular cellphones, including the new Apple iPhone! (Mobile17 is a ringtone maker).
[from bushwald] AT&T girds for iPhone launch on June 29 - USATODAY.com
Contact Cingular by Phone and customer service
See ya Cingular, yo AT&T
We’d be hard pressed to ever admit that we would actually miss any telecom moniker, but still. . . . AT&T’s announcement this morning that it’s starting the final phase of its rebranding efforts from Cingular to AT&T, does make us pause. The Cingular brand, which Om says it cost nearly $4 billion to build-up, just fell into the dustbin of the rare well-known and now retired brand names.
While everyone has been waiting for them to make the change over, not everyone agrees it’s a good move. Analysts say that AT&T was disappointed with last quarter’s postpaid subscribers adds and partially attributes that to the re-branding efforts of its mobile service. That’s why the company is using the iPhone to put the seal on the branding play.
But a lot of folks also think Cingular would be a better branding umbrella than the staid phone company-conveying AT&T. Including our readers — 54% of them say Cingular is a better choice, while only 28% like AT&T better.
While the company definitely needs one brand for its quadruple play, our readers think Cingular says the young, wireless mobile user far better than the historically named American Telephone and Telegraph company. AT&T says positive things like corporate, and secure, but also traditional technology, ie phones — yuck.
I think the rebranding is a mistake and a result of both group think and loyalty to the old days of telecom. The fact that most of the senior management at AT&T are lifelong telecommunications professionals influences all of their decisions. – Sean
This is a huge mistake. Cingular’s brand is the antithesis of AT&T. It’s personal, individual, young and hip. When I think of AT&T I think of my grandmother, long distance and rotary phones – Matt Dickman
Read similar comments for these two posts: Cingular vs AT&T: The Name Game, and Cingular is AT&T for now.
Others see no other options for AT&T:
There was no way they were going to rename the entire company Cingular (there would have never been a Cingular if SBC had been able to acquire Bellsouth back in the Clinton days), so what else were they going to do, really. – Jesse Kopelman
Our readers have even suggested a Cingular MVNO might be an interesting move. Anything to keep the name in play it seems. OK, maybe our mobile-loving readers are a little biased.
Maybe the AT&T rebrand will go the way of Prince — confused consumers just stick to the original. We’ll have to see how their subscriber numbers do over the next few quarters.
Moto, dumping some inventory?
Following a rather weak first quarter earnings report and a dismal outlook, some feared that Motorola was going to start dumping excess inventory and into the market, and start aggressive discounting. Apparently that might have started already.
SMS Text News reports that Orange is doing brisk sales on Moto. Why? Free phones with new accounts, and around $60 for upgrades. In the US, with the exception of KRZR most of the Moto phones are being offered at ridiculously low prices for new customers, especially at Cingular.
Will this lead to follow-on discounting from other phone makers, thus creating a whole new mobile handset problem?
Minute Minder for Cingular Service :: Firefox Add-ons
Sprint’s own activist investor
Add a vocal Carl Icahn-style activist investor to the long list of issues Sprint needs to tackle in 2007: build WiMAX, fix the Nextel integration, cut workers, coax back those high-end customers . . . now also figure out how to manage press-friendly pissed off shareholders.
The Wall Street Journal published an article this morning about disgruntled investor Ralph Whitworth, who’s investment firm reportedly owns a $500 million stake, or almost 1%, of Sprint (Reuters report here). Whitworth wants changes at the recently poor performing carrier, including less spending on capex and a sale of its fiber-optic network and long-distance business.
The interesting part is that Sprint hopes its WiMAX network will help with its lagging numbers behind Cingular and Verizon Wireless. And Sprint plans to spend around $3 billion on the rollout.
But Whitworth sees WiMAX as “a drain on the company’s overall cashflow” and “too speculative an investment,” according to an unnamed source in the WSJ. (In double PR talk that could easily be Whitworth himself.)
Sprint’s shares actually rose 2.97% (and rising) today, likely as a result of the report. That could mean the street agrees with the uncertain WiMAX assessment, or just that Sprint needs more drastic changes. Or likely both. (For what it is worth, the rise in shares means Whitworth’s firm’s $500 million stake went up to $515 million - after the story appeared.)
Interestingly Sprint actually sees its WiMAX investment as less of an investment than it would make on other forms of network upgrades. Sprint says it will overlay its WiMAX network onto its 3G network at one tenth the cost of what it takes to build out its 3G network. I’m not sure capital expenses are Sprint’s issue, just spending money on networks (Nextel, WiMAX) that might have integration issues, is a bigger problem.
