telecom, Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake

Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. My
first two statements have been incorrect by HUNDREDS of dollars. I
have wasted hours sorting this out on the phone with their reps. And
after these corrections the website still reflects the wrong billing
amounts.

Every time I make a call I get a very loud static ticking before
connection. The minutes usage portion of the website is
indecipherable even to their service reps. After ten minutes of
explaining and back pedaling the rep only made things worse by making
me realize I have a two year contract with a@#holes.

Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T.



I've a few friends who use AT&T wireless, and though they haven't had
any billing issues (yet), they're not too happy with the overall service.

That said, you may be able to "break" the contract by paying a preset
amount (usually ~$250). It should be in your contract, you may wanna
actually read your contract this time :P

-- Ankur

>> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks.


Nope.

Cingular has an agreement to buy AT&T Wireless, but it's waiting for
regulators to OK it. Until then, the two companies are operating
separately. It's not out of the question that the regulators will
turn them down, since that'd be a merger of two of the three largest
wireless companies in the country.

When AT&T spun of AT&T Wireless, part of the deal was that AT&T
woudn't compete with their namesake under the AT&T brand. Since the
plan is that ATTWS will be absorbed into Cingular and use the Cingular
name, after that AT&T is free to start using the AT&T name for
wireless service, which they say they will.

Regards,

John Levine XXXX@XXXXX.COM Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies,
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com , Mayor
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:18:29 -0400, Ankur Shah






Not *yet* they don't! AT&T has hardly turned over the keys at this
time. They are still two distinct companies and are still doing
business independently even though there are reports that some AT&T
subscribers are able to use the cingular network in *some* locations.

So basically, you're hedging your bets on regulatory hurdles. During
a pro-big business administration, no less?


True, but as you so keenly point out, AT&T wireless is still the same
AT&T wireless it has been, and barring the regulatory hurdles you
appear to be banking on, it *will* be absorbed into Cingular.

E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

As I understand it, we're looking at roughly six months to complete
the transaction if everything goes smoothly and regulators approve it.

JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / XXXX@XXXXX.COM
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

From all the hoopla around the two companies, I thought Cingular had
already started the process of acquisition of ATTWS back in
February. I also remember reading that the "acquisition" was to be
finalized in September and is just waiting for a final approval from
the FCC. Not too sure how one is not unrelated to the other?

And you're correct, a friend of mine in New Jersey is able to switch
between AT&T and Cingular networks (though, he's a ATT sub) without
problems. I think its just that ATTWS permits free roaming on
Cingular, whereas Cingular prohibits doing the same on ATTWS or any
other carrier's network.




You're probably correct, although I hear mixed things about their whole
merger/acquisition (see my previous post).

This post from alt.cellular.* http://tinyurl.com/48wgs , for instance
says:

"Eventhough Cingular has bought AT&T the merger is not complete when
it comes to infrastructure consolidation.".

So Cingular has "bought" ATTWS, but is just waiting for a nod from the
FCC to consolidate the shares? Nevertheless, this yahoo post from 8/13
seems to suggest that the deal may get the Federal approval sooner
than what people had initially expected:

http://tinyurl.com/5dxu8

Regards,

-- Ankur

They may have, but there are a lot of things that have to happen for
it to be finalized.



Infrastructure - Infrastructure consolidation refers to consolidating
the two *networks.* This may happen quickly, or it may not
(e.g. Verizon Wireless's creation, which happened around four years
ago, and it took them at least three years to standardize policies,
billing systems and calling plans across all of their markets.)

JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / XXXX@XXXXX.COM
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

> And you're correct, a friend of mine in New Jersey is able to switch

This is partly a technical question, but mostly a question of your
rate plan.

Cingular and AT&T for the most part use the same technology, TDMA
migrating to GSM in both the 800 MHz AMPS band and the 1900 MHz PCS
band. That means that an AT&T handset will work in a Cingular network
and vice versa.

My Cingular phone is quad mode, GSM 1900, GSM 800, TDMA 800, and
analog 800, and roams just fine onto AT&T in places like Pittsburgh
where Cingular has no service. My plan offers national roaming, so it
doesn't cost any extra when I do so.

Verizon is almost entirely CDMA, so you can only roam onto them with
analog AMPS, and most phones are programmed to try really hard to find
a digitial system before falling back to analog.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and
AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T
rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be
swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the
Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same
thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close
to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on
their network with no success. PAT]

gt; [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and

What that often means is that the phone is required to use a SIM card
from the provider from which you bought the phone. It doesn't really
have anything to do with roaming.

There seems to be a healthy market for phone unlocking programs and
codes -- try Googling "unlock cingular SIM", for example. Sometimes
it's possible, and sometimes it's not -- rumor has it that no one
outside the factory knows how to unlock certain ATTWS phones. ATTWS
seems to have the worst attitude towards unlocking phones, by the way
-- they won't unlock a phone even after your contract is over and the
phone is paid for, and they refuse to admit that it might even be
possible to do so. I was once told by an ATTWS technician that I
couldn't be talking to him, because the phone I was using wouldn't
work on their network. True, I might as well not have been talking to
him for all the good it did me.

That phone was an unlocked Cingular Nokia 6340i I bought on eBay. It
said "Cingular" on the display, but worked fine with an ATTWS SIM. I
finally got sick of ATTWS's deteriorating coverage and poor customer
service and switched to Verizon Wireless.


Jack Hamilton
XXXX@XXXXX.COM


In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted comfort and
security. And in the end, they lost it all - freedom, comfort and
security. Edward Gibbons

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I first re-located here to
Independence, Kansas from Chicago I had a Nokia 6100 cell phone
programmed onto AT&T Wireless with a Chicago area (630) number, in
the 'national no-roaming charges' plan. AT&T served us here as an
'extended' point (closest major city is Tulsa) on the Cell One tower
out of Liberty, KS. We are *barely* in the AT&T extended area of
coverage; it was pretty awful service. Then one day, AT&T decided
to close up our local shop here, and the AT&T service rep that was
here in town told me that she was going to become an agency for
Cingular Wireless instead, and 'her employees' there would become
Cingular Wireless employees also as of some date. She converted my
Nokia 6100 phone over from area 630 Chicago to an area 620 southeast
Kansas number, put me on a local plan (no more free roaming) but
kept me on AT&T. I think she said I was her last customer while she
represented AT&T.

A week or so later, I went past her shop downtown; it now had a
'Cingular Wireless' sign on the front of it and a huge stack of
Nokia 6100 series phones in the window for a 'close out' sale. Take
a year contract on Cingular Wireless and get one of those phones
for free. I told her since I already have a Nokia 6100 phone which
I like, just cut it over to Cingular for me. She said "AT&T has
that phone of your's locked up tight. No way to do it; but the same
phone is on close out now through Cingular Wireless; take one of
them for free." I told her I did not want to lose my phone listings
or the other features I had programmed into *my* phone. She said
most of what was in there she could 'suck out' and move it into the
new phone (directory items; she pointed at a device on her desk
with a jumper which went from one Nokia 6100 phone to another Nokia
6100 phone), "but not the transmission software, which is why you
have to get a new phone". Before I agreed to that, I went to the
other cell phone agencies around town (Cell One, Alltel, US Cellular)
and had them

Yes. Locking is one thing. The technology is still compatible. Sprint
locks its phones too, but if you can social-engineer the Master
Subsidy Lock code out of them, you can use a tri-mode Sprint phone on
Alltel or Verizon. Both of those carriers use CDMA like Sprint and
both are willing to activate other carriers' handsets as long as those
handsets use CDMA.


Well, of course; Alltel doesn't run GSM and the 6100 is a GSM
phone. If the 6100 has analog you MIGHT be able to get it to run in
analog if Alltel has analog coverage. Maybe.


JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / XXXX@XXXXX.COM
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

Unlike CDMA, TDMA, or analog phones, "reprogramming" a GSM phone is simply
a matter of changing the SIM card in the phone.

ATTWS "SIM locks" their handsets, so that the handset will not accept a
non-ATTWS SIM card. Unlike most GSM carriers, ATTWS will not unlock your
handset for any reason (not even if you're a long-time customer and/or are
willing to pay for the privilege); nor will they sell you an ATTWS SIM
card to put into an existing unlocked GSM phone.

It is for this reason, among others, that I would not consider buying GSM
service from ATTWS.

If you look at the used cell phone market, you'll see that an
"unlocked" (either officially or by hackers) GSM phone commands a
premium over one which is still SIM locked. Hacker SIM unlocking is a
big business in Europe, although I believe it's actually illegal in
some countries over there. It's legal in the US as long as you're not
doing so for fraudulent purposes; when you buy a phone, title
transfers to you, and the only recourse the selling phone company has
is to make you sign a service commitment and hit you with an early
cancellation penalty if you break it.

I wonder what Dobson's policy is on GSM unlocking. My Alaska cell
phone service is currently TDMA with Dobson. I'm in no rush to switch
it to GSM, and by the time the plug is pulled on TDMA I'm going to
give serious consideration to satellite instead of GSM.

At least Verizon has decided that handset locking is silly, and
doesn't do it; all modern Verizon phones have a "security code" or
"unlock code" of 000000. It's good press for them, and it doesn't
really matter since most other CDMA carriers (at least, SprintPCS and
Telus) will not active an ex-Verizon phone on their networks even
though technically it will work. Verizon *will* activate an
ex-SprintPCS or ex-Telus phone on its network as long as you get the
security code for it and accept the risk of it not working right.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc

Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Your cingular phone is not quad *mode*! It is tri-mode with dual band
GSM, TDMA (IS-136) and AMPS. If it was quad mode it would have to be
able to do four separate types of mobile/cell technologies such as
GSM, TDMA, CDMA and AMPS. It's multi *band* but that is not the same
thing.

Telecom Digest Editor went on to comment:


AT&T "SOC" locks their phones to work with their system. I've heard
(but haven't personally experienced it) that they can be programmed
over the air to use the other company's network, but the problem lies
in that it will work fine when you're not in the other company's area,
but when you are in the company's area that the phone originally was
on there are problems. You could probably "fix" the problem by having
the phone re-flashed with the firmware that the other company uses,
but you'd have to do it independently from the manufacturer since they
probably wouldn't put another company's firmware on someone else's
phone even though the actual phones are exactly the same. The
firmware is different and is customized for a particular carrier.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular

No, the Cingular ones are programmed to look for Cingular systems and
the AT&T ones are programmed to look for AT&T systems, but in each
case if they can't find their favorite, they can and do roam on the
other since they're both TDMA and GSM.

The GSM handsets are also locked so that they only work with SIM cards
of the carrier that sold it to you. All handsets can be unlocked with
the cooperation of the selling carrier, some can be unlocked without.

But Alltel is CDMA, so an AT&T phone would only work in analog on
Alltel's network anyhow.


JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / XXXX@XXXXX.COM
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.