What happened to Cingular?

[milkman]

Around the end of June, we had a thunder storm here and my Dish Network started having more than usual glitches, service came out and replaced the receiver at the dish and one of the boxes in the house, he said that could have been a possible lightning hit. At the same time, my Cingular phone and all my family's cingular phones in this area started having no signal in places that had previously been no problem. I think that is about the time AT&T took over also, maybe some cell towers were affected by the storm, or maybe AT&T made some changes, I don't know, I just know that my phone service sucks now and AT&T says that no changes have been made since they took over, I just know that I have a lot of dropped calls and places now that I get no service. I have been really happy with Cingular, good service and could get reception anywhere till recently, anyone else noticed a difference in their service in the last couple of months or is it just a problem in my area?

 

[ragkar]

The is a usenet forum for cingular with over 10,000 messages
It is here
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.cellular.cingular/topics?lnk=sg

 

[jdbower]

Have you "rebooted" your phone recently? My Cingular phone recently went dead and I had to reboot to get onto AT&T's network because they changed the basestation configuration. I'd try removing the battery and reinstalling to see if that helps things.

 

[waynokakid]

I have been with cingular for a couple years now. Live in a rural area, but got good service with them. For the last couple months reception has been crappy to say the least. Not getting recepetion where I had before. Called cingular they told me a tower was down nearby and would be back up soon. That has been almost a month ago and still crappy reception. So what gives? Also cingular still show up on my screen, but on my dad's it shows at&t. We are on the family plan, so can't figure that out either.

 

[Tom_H]

From what I read recently, Cingular, AT&T Wireless, and one of the Baby Bells from back east had actually been operating as one unit for some time. They had spent over $2 Billion to build the Cingular "brand" image. Their experts decided that even though the current ATT is not the old ATT, the ATT name as a "brand" has such a long history that dropping the name "Cingular" and just advertising as "ATT" would ultimately be more profitable. "ATT" has such a strong name recognition that they figure it will simply generate more sales.

 

[bill177]

Sounds like mind over matter to me. AT&T doesn't mind and the customers don't matter.

 

[jdbower]

From what I read recently, Cingular, AT&T Wireless, and one of the Baby Bells from back east had actually been operating as one unit for some time.

Kind of, Cingular was owned by SBC and BellSouth, they then bought AT&T Wireless but AT&T retained the rights to AT&T Wireless' name. SBC then bought AT&T but kept the AT&T name and brought back the AT&T Wireless name. This story explains it much better

 

[milkman]

Was down a stretch of road today that had really spotty reception for the last 2-1/2 months, worked all the way across that stretch, maybe the weather was just right, or maybe they fixed something, have to watch a few other places.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Same here, my reception is now crap as compared to a few months ago. It used to work fine at my house and now have problems...Kyle

 

[milkman]

Getting ready to go out now, just noticed that I have a full signal here at the computer, this is one place that had been ifffy, weak signal and dropping calls, maybe it's fixed here. Some of the roads I'm going over will be a test, I'll watch the signal as I go along the edge of Ft. Knox, another bad place.

 

[Bird]

I guess I just haven't been far enough from the big city in awhile. We got our cell phone in 1999 and it was then Southwestern Bell Mobile, which became Cingular, and we found places that reception was poor; sometimes even non-existent. But it gradually improved to where we haven't found anywhere it wouldn't work just fine in the last 5 years. But it's been a couple of years now since we went out of state more than a hundred miles from home.

 

[milkman]

Bird, I've been really happy with Cingular up till the end of June, then something happened, and not just to my phone, several people I know around here have had the same thing happen to their service. I was on roads today that formerly had full signal before, and now there is no signal at all on three mile stretch of that road, and spotty service for the 22 miles from my house to town. I will get online tomorrow and leave them some indication of my dissatisfaction, only thing I have no other alternative, Sprint is dead here and Verizon is not much better than Sprint.

 

[dgl24087]

I switched from Sprint to US Cellular almost 3 years ago, rarely ever lose signal. Proof that bigger isn't always better in corporate mergers.

 

[txdon]

I did not notice the difference until I got a new phone from AT&T. My reception now is not as good. But I now have games I do not play and take really bad pictures and can get downloads I would not use.


I don't even use the text messaging.

But at least I can look at an older 20 dollar bill and not think it's counterfeit as the young checker at the grocery did yesterday.

 

[Bird]

I don't even use the text messaging

I, too, have no use for text messaging, but last month there was a 15 cent charge for a "received" text message. I don't even remember exactly what the message was, but it was sales pitch/commercial from someone. Now 15 cents isn't much, but who knows how many there might be in the future, so I called AT&T and had them block all text messaging from my account.

 

[George2615]

It seems to be the same problem all over since AT&T took over Cingular. I've been a customer since 2000. My first phone was the old Motorola 5 watt bag phone. I have had many others since. Many people here in Upstate NY have had more dropped calls and lower signal strength since AT&T took over. AT&T says they made no changes so why do so many people all over have the same problem. I think someone isn't being truthful with us. I do have a lower signal and an occassional dropped call at home that I never noticed before.
At work I don't have to worry since I have 5 cell sites on the roof. I don't use it in the car since they made that illegal here unless its handsfree. If I need to make a call from the car or truck there is a hands free phone built in (GM product) to use. Very rare do I not have a signal since I have an AT&T phone (personal), A Nextel phone (for work) and Verizon phone in the vehicle. At least one has a signal where I go. And no I'm not rich having three cells. I have my personal AT&T cell for emergencies, The Nextel is for work and they don't want it used for personal calls, and they Verizon phone came with the vehicle.
I'll have to do what Bird did and call AT&T to block text messages since I have no use for that function and noticed it on my last couple of bills also.

 

[Spiveyman]

Hey Milkman, what part of KY are you from? I'm having the EXACT same problems as you are. I got my Cingular/Razor deal in Feb and it's been awesome anywhere near Lexington, and even worked great out on the back of my farm in Richmond... until a few weeks ago. Dropped calls, bad reception. I thought maybe they were rebelling against NASCAR or something for not letting the 31 don the new AT&T logo, but they allowed it Saturday and I'm still having problems with my phone, so I guess the conspiracy theory is out.

 

[milkman]

If you draw a straight line from Lou. to Owensboro, I'm smack dab in the middle of the two. I got on the Cingular-AT&T site and tried their CONTACT link to let them know what I think about their service over the last two months, and they have a list of topics to choose from, then subcategories to select, it was like answering questions to a survey, couldn't find a place to let them know what's really going on. If I can find 45 minutes where I won't get interrupted, I'll get in line on hold and listen to some music.