Cingular To Be Rebranded By AT&T

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&amp;cdvn=news&amp;newsarticleid=22860">http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&amp;cdvn=news&amp;newsarticleid=22860</a><br /><br /><i>"In the coming days, AT&amp;T will launch extensive new advertising, which will begin the transition of the BellSouth brand name to AT&amp;T. AT&amp;T will re-brand Cingular through a co-branded transition, which is scheduled to start in 2007."</i><br /><br />As AT&amp;T wraps up its acquisition of BellSouth, which was its major partner in the Cingular venture, it will rebrand the service, though the specific name isn't mentioned. It could revert to AT&amp;T Wireless, which is what many of you knew the service as just a year or so ago when Cingular took over the wireless network before the old AT&amp;T merged with SBC. Confused yet? :wink:

[mattbugz]

And in a few years, there will be the AT&amp;T Divestiture of 2015 which will segregate AT&amp;T into numerous distinct and separate RBOC's. AT&amp;T will retain its name and be known as Ma Bell. The RBOC's will be regionalized and be known as Baby Bells.

:D :) :twisted:

[ctmagnus]

Aingular?

CT&amp;T?

"We can't make up our collective frackin' minds!"?

[superrrguy]

Will we be forced to bring in our Cingular phones to be rebranded or will they have a DIY kit?

[Phillip Dyson]

AT&amp;T will re-brand Cingular through a co-branded transition, which is scheduled to start in 2007."[/i]


AHA!!!!

i knew it! And I just converted my mother to Cingular.

[virain]

AT&amp;T is an iconic name of American communication industry, so you could expect that it is not going to go away in history so easy

[bleeman]

Hmm, maybe DCIT will be the new name as in Dog Chasing It's Tail. :mrgreen:

[Jason Lee]

Maybe my bill will get lost in the transition... :mrgreen:

[dma1965]

This is all part of the cycle of hell :devilboy: this entity, which clearly has no real name, keeps putting me through every couple of years. Our company has been with "the beast" :devilboy: since the days when it was called PacBell Wireless. When it became Cingular Wireless, trying to get anything accomplished was a nightmare. The excuse was always something to do with the transition to Cingular Wireless. Then they aquired AT&amp;T Wireless, and the customer service excuse was always something about the merger, regrouping, scaling up, down, sideways of the two companies causing "the beast" :devilboy: to burp up flames (or something like that), and it would all get better once things settled down. Now, as it is today, it is tolerable to try to get something resolved through customer service. So what do they want to do now? They want to change the name of "the beast" :devilboy: back to AT&amp;T, so they can spend the next 2 years apologizing to me and telling me how much they understand my frustrations. Perhaps in a few years they will just change their name to the :devilboy: Demons Of The Unholy :devilboy: phone company. At least then when we either renew or sign up for the first time, we will know what we are getting into. :devilboy:

[ghostppc]

Maybe my bill will get lost in the transition... :mrgreen:

Nah, you'll get a separate bill from each company under their current and former names! :deal:

[Jason Lee]

Nah, you'll get a separate bill from each company under their current and former names! :deal:

LOL yeah that is probably more accurate. :roll:

[beq]

Think about all those wasted millions of advertising dollars though, already spent over the years building up mindshare for the "Cingular" name (as well as changing mindshare from AT&amp;T Wireless to Cingular after the acquisition).

And emphasizing to everyone over and over again the difference between Cingular Blue (aka AT&amp;T Wireless) and Cingular Orange... If the new name goes back to AT&amp;T, will it still be orange??

[daS]

Our company has been with "the beast" :devilboy: since the days when it was called PacBell Wireless.
The history is even more ironic:

PacBell was one of the first cellular providers in California. But they soon spun it off as AirTouch (which eventually became part of Verizon.) Soon after that, PacBell realized that the future was in wireless, so they wanted back in the game. Unfortunately for them (at the time) each metro area could only support two analog cellular carriers and LA already had LA Cellular and AirTouch. So, PacBell elected to be one of the first carriers in the USA to support the GSM standard (although at a different frequency than Europe since the European bands were not available in the USA.)

So I went from PacBell Wireless to AirTouch. Back to PacBell Wireless in 1997 when they brought out GSM. Then becoming Cingular and now most likely becoming AT&amp;T Wireless.

As an added bonus confusion factor, AT&amp;T Wireless bought LA Cellular which of course became part of Cingular. So if you were an early adopter of cellular service in LA and stuck with the "same" vendor the whole time, you either started with PacBell (now AT&amp;T) and ended up on their competitor (Verizon) or started with their competitor at the time and ended up with AT&amp;T. 8O

Now don't get me started on the Cingular/AT&amp;T/T-Mobile history. :roll:

[virain]

Am I glad I stayed with T-Mobile?! :lol: Since they were VoiceStream. Tranzition went smoothly, and I wouldn't even notice it, if not for a new logo on a bill. :D

[k1darkknight]

Eh...even the landline-based phone companies have gone through their share of name changes, since the start of deregulation. Ohio has been a really fun state for this, as you'll see toward the end of this post. A lot of this information is well-known to some, but much of the early history below may be unfamiliar to many of us.

1878: "Bell Telephone Company", was founded, along with sister company, "New England Telephone and Telegraph Company.
1879: These merged to form the "National Bell Telephone Company"
1880: This company merged with still others, under yet another new name, "American Bell Telephone Company"
1880: American Bell management created what would become AT&amp;T Long Lines.
1885: The project was incorporated as "American Telephone and Telegraph Company".
1899: On December 30, in a situation curiously mirrored by the recent SBC-AT&amp;T move, AT&amp;T bought the assets of American Bell - its own former parent company. In contrast, this earlier move was due to limitations placed on American Bell by corporate law in Massachusetts (home of American Bell headquarters).
1907: Beginning a long run of anticompetitive practices, AT&amp;T began purchasing some of its competitors. The industry benefited, however, due to the large, national company's ability to effectively set standards that a more fractured market might not have been able to implement.

From the mid '50s through the early '80s, AT&amp;T went through a series of antitrust battles, culminating in the 1984 breakup.

1984: Effective January 1, AT&amp;T's local telephone system was broken up into seven independent "Regional Bell Operating Companies" (commonly called "Baby Bells" from AT&amp;T's nickname of "Ma Bell"). Among others, these included Ameritech (holding company of Ohio Bell), Southwestern Bell (holding company in...hmmm...the southwest?), and Pacific Telesis (parent of Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell). AT&amp;T itself continued operating its long distance service, renaming "AT&amp;T Long Lines" to "AT&amp;T Communications".

Through the rest of the '80s, other parts of AT&amp;T went through significant restructuring, rebranding and rearranging several of its subsidiaries and units, merging some and dividing others.

1993: Ameritech dropped their daughter companies' localized names in favor of the corporate name. Ohio Bell, along with the other subsidiaries were collectively renamed Ameritech.
1995: Southwestern Bell Corporation changed its name to SBC Communications, Inc.
1996: Deregulation via this year's Telecommunications Act, allowed SBC to become a national company. At this point, several of AT&amp;T's divisions were spun off.
1997: SBC acquired Pacific Telesis Group, former "Baby Bell" and holding company for Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell.

1999: SBC acquired (merged with?) Ameritech.

2000: Unlucky corporate gambles, falling long-distance rates, and a weakening market for telecom services all combined to force AT&amp;T to undergo major reorganization.
2001: SBC renamed many of their subsidiaries, placing "SBC at the beginning of their names (SBC Pacific Bell, SBC Nevada Bell, SBC Southwestern Bell).
2002: SBC rebrands all their operating companies, resulting in "SBC" as a national brand. Ameritech, combined with SBC's other subsidiaries, became known simply as SBC.
2005: SBC completed its acquisition of AT&amp;T Corp. (the original AT&amp;T), the new, "merged" company calling itself AT&amp;T, Inc.
2006: Effective January 1, AT&amp;T, Inc. renamed all its operating companies, with SBC joining fellow daughter companies to be called (the new) AT&amp;T.

So, as you can see, for telephone customers in Ohio, we've had essentially three companies (using a total of four names) since 1984.
Ohio Bell: 1984 (or earlier) to 1993.
Ameritech: 1993 to 2000.
SBC: 2000 to 2005.
(the new) AT&amp;T: 2006 to 20??.

I was at the gas station the other day and saw a driver for SBC/AT&amp;T, and asked if they'd finally gotten all the trucks repainted with the SBC logo yet...he said there were still a few with Ameritech painted on them, just with magnetic signs over the old logo!

Can we get those for our phones? Or new stickers, at least?

[daS]

I was at the gas station the other day and saw a driver for SBC/AT&amp;T, and asked if they'd finally gotten all the trucks repainted with the SBC logo yet...he said there were still a few with Ameritech painted on them, just with magnetic signs over the old logo!

Can we get those for our phones? Or new stickers, at least?
Back in the early 1980's I worked for a company that made automated test equipment which was used by the "old AT&amp;T" (once known as Western Electric.) Part of the ruling of the breakup was that AT&amp;T could no longer use the "bell" logo - it being restricted for use only by the RBOCs (Baby Bells). AT&amp;T fought that until the last minute, so they didn't have any time to deal with it, and as you can imagine, that logo was everywhere. So when I visited their facilities soon after the breakup, they had tape covering the logo on almost everything. But on their ID badges and a number of other places where the logo was small, they had secretaries using hole punches to truly remove the logo. :roll:

[Oeryk]

Back when all of this began, I wondered why they would change it at all. Afterall, Cingular had spent a reported $4 BILLION on branding, etc. The orange color and the "Jack" logo were easily recognizable and popular. Customer service had never been better (most of the time). I don't know the legal aspect of it, but if it were my company, I would simply ad a tagline. It could be something like, "An AT&amp;T Company." I would keep the familiar name and logo.

At any rate, when it started, I modded the logo just for fun. I hope the suits don't knock on my door, as it is all in fun. :D

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1073/762/1600/NewJackCity.1.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1073/762/1600/NewJackCity.1.jpg

[Jason Lee]

lol
Love the graphic. :)