Cingular Won't Ditch AT&T Wireless
Business Week is taking a look at the news that AT&T customers are bailing at rapid rates and explains why it’s unlikely the defections will impact the deal in any way pointing out that it’s not so much the subscribers that they’re looking at as it is the spectrum they gain – making them one of the first mainstream publications to point out the importance of the spectrum (which, prior to this deal and their recent purchase of spectrum from NextWave, they were well short of). Besides, it’s likely that the worst of the defections are over at this point – though it’s likely there still will be a fair amount of bailouts until the deal is closed. If anything, because of this, there may be incentive for Cingular to speed up the close as much as possible. The article also discusses the likelihood that AT&T will quickly launch their own wireless service under the AT&T Wireless brand once the Cingular deal closes and AT&T gets the rights to the name back. I had wondered if this was really that smart of a move for AT&T to do so immediately, as the bad reputation of the existing AT&T Wireless is likely to automatically pass on to the new entity. However, Business Week suggests that if AT&T immediately launches the service, in the mass confusion, it may actually spell trouble for Cingular as more old AT&T Wireless customers jump to… well, AT&T Wireless.
