In article <LHoxi.127$Dg.98@fe085.usenetserver.com>,
Todd Allcock <elecconnec@AmericaOnLine.com> wrote:

> At 17 Aug 2007 12:38:45 -0700 Michael Wise wrote:
>
> > Flawed as well as incorrect line of thinking. Pac Bell Wireless
> > became
> > SBC wireless and then rebranded wireless services to Cingular. SBC
> > bought ATTWS, but kept the AT&T name for wireless.
>
>
> Actually, Cingular (a independant company owned by SBC and BellSouth)
> bought AT&T Wireless,...


Are you sure about that? My recollection from that time frame is that
Cingular was merely a rebranded name for the cellular service which SBC
implemented shortly after the SBC/Bell South merger. They may have been
considered independent (much in the same way VZW is technically
independent from Verizon...but in reality it was the same company with
the same board members.


> which at that point in time was an independent
> company spun off from AT&T (the long distance company left over by
> the Ma Bell breakup,) months before, and lost the right to use the
> AT&T name, which required spending millions on new signage and untold
> gallons of orange paint rebranding hundreds of AT&T stores as
> Cingular stores.

> Then SBC bought AT&T (the long distance company,) and started
> renaming themselves AT&T, and of course getting the right to use the
> AT&T name for wireless, but BellSouth wasn't interested in putting
> another company's name on their half of Cingular, until...
>
> ...AT&T (SBC) merged with BellSouth and became one happy
> dysfunctional company, and started spending untold millions
> rebranding the Cingular stores as AT&T stores... ;-)


ATTWS existed long before SBC bought AT&T. I know, because from about
1994-1999 (or perhaps 1998) I and the company (Wired Magazine) I managed
IT and landline/wireless service for used the A-side carrier Cellular
One (SF Bay Area market). AT&T incorporated C1 and rebranded as ATTWS.
During that time, I also had accounts with Pac Bell Wireless, Nextel,
and GTE Wireless (Wired wanting me to stay on top of who had the best
coverage).

I'm aware of the logistical hassles incurred after the by all the sign
changes, but the company was known as Cingular before it became ATTWS.




> > No part of the former Pac Bell Wireless is a
> > part of today's VZW (to my knowledge).
>
> I believe you're right. However, how did PacTel get stuck at 1900-
> MHz?


Because, at least in the SF Bay Area, C1 (which ATTWS later acquired)
was already using the 800 MHz TDMA and GTE Wireless was using the 800
MHz CDMA freqs.


> Generally the incumbent landline Telco got the 800-Mhz "B"
> (which originally stood for "B"ell, as in Ma Bell!) license unless
> they were shortsighted enoughbto sell it to someone else in case this
> whole cellphone thing turned out to be a fad! ;-)
> (US West, now Qwest, sold most of their original licenses so here in
> Denver, Verizon is the B carrier, and AT&T is the "A" or "A"lternate
> carrier.
>
> > Sure, it's very likely that the thread curmudgeon was a customer of
> > one
> > of one of the companies now part of VZW, but that company was not
> > VZW.
>
>
> Or perhaps he assumes the original "B" carrier there, who must have
> bought the license from PacTel originally, was somehow affiliated
> with them, since PacTel effectively sold themselves out of the
> cellphone biz until the 1900MHz PCS-band auctions years later allowed
> them back in. (As it did Qwest in Colorado and a large part of the
> midwest.)

I don't know of anytime when Pac Bell offered any sort of cellular in
the Chicagoland (where our thread curmudgeon suggests he lives).
>
> (You've got to love the government- they broke The Phone Company into
> a dozen regional companies to protect consumers from "monopoly" and
> then let all of them merge back into two or three to benefit
> consumers by the "economies of scale!")


Isn't America great?! ; )



--Mike