Cingular integrates AT&T storefronts, launches Razr

Three weeks after Cingular Wireless’s acquisition of AT&T Wireless, Cingular has completed the transition of its former rival’s more than 1000 company-owned storefronts to the Cingular brand. The combined company plans to have 10,500 AT&T Wireless agent locations converted in the next few months.

The transition took place literally overnight, Cingular officials said. Fourteen thousand employees spent most of Sunday night refitting 1055 AT&T Wireless stores with the Cingular logo, marketing and sales materials and stocked with Cingular phones and accessories. Meanwhile agent locations received supplies for partial conversion. In addition, Cingular said that thousands of former AT&T Wireless employees have been retrained in the last few weeks.

"Our employees have done a remarkable job of quickly integrating AT&T Wireless locations into the Cingular family," Chief Operating Officer Ralph de la Vega said in a statement. "The entire Cingular family will benefit by having the same experience at all stores."

While Cingular has released little information on the status of its network integration efforts, the company announced today that it has incorporated former AT&T Wireless customers into its mobile-to-mobile service plan, meaning any customer with the service option can call all 46 million Cingular and former AT&T Wireless customers for free. Cingular added that it had conducted more than 30,000 end-to-end tests at former AT&T Wireless locations to ensure new activations and account and handset upgrades will gel with the Cingular network and back office systems.

In celebration of the new integration, Cingular launched the highly anticipated Motorola Razr V3 flip phone over its networks. Hailed by analysts as Motorola’s crowning achievement in returning to stylish prominence in the cell phone market, the GSM/GPRS quad-band ultra compact phone has been awaiting a carrier home since Motorola unveiled it in July. The phone isn’t cheap though. With MPEG 4 playback, a 4x zoom digital camera, Bluetooth connectivity and a slim design that eschews standard plastic molding for an odd amalgam of aluminum, magnesium nickel plating and chemically hardened glass, the handset isn’t cheap. Cingular is selling the phone for $500 with a two-year contract, and despite its data functionality, the phone isn’t 3G-enabled, meaning it won’t work on the new UMTS networks Cingular inherited from AT&T Wireless.

Cingular wasn’t the only carrier with a new handset launch today. Sprint PCS launched its latest smartphone today, this one based on the BlackBerry messaging platform. Sprint is selling the BlackBerry 7750 through its enterprise sales channels. The 7750 is the first Research In Motion device Sprint is carrying since announcing its partnership with RIM in August. Sprint is deploying the BlackBerry enterprise solution over its networks enabling enterprise customers to access corporate email and other data through Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino servers.