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.