AT&T/BellSouth deal helps Cingular

Early assessments of AT&T's $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth suggest that the deal is unlikely to cause any hiccups in ongoing technology plans at Cingular Wireless, even though it probably will change the company's name.

In proposing to acquire BellSouth, AT&T also essentially is planning to buy the roughly 40% share of its Cingular joint venture that it doesn't already own. The company said in the merger announcement that it expects Cingular to contribute about one-third of the combined company's revenues by 2007. The initial announcement also suggested that Cingular will market services under the AT&T brand, a brand Cingular actually phased out after it acquired AT&T in 2004.

While the marketing identity may change, technology plans, for now at least, seem unlikely to stall or change. Lehman Bros. analysts wrote in a Monday research note that they did not expect the deal to change the sales outlooks for the technology and equipment vendors that serve Cingular. "The merger press release ... highlights continued plans for broadband and consumer video deployments, as well as migration of traffic to one common IP network--these trends have been driving increased spending for many of our companies under coverage and we do not expect these trends to change. We do not expect sales to Cingular for the companies in our coverage to be disrupted due to this merger."

Another wireless analyst noted that AT&T already has chosen the same vendor--Lucent Technologies--for IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) technology that Cingular has. "That being the case, it wouldn't appear this changes anything for Cingular and IMS," said the analyst, who asked not to be named.

Wachovia analysts added in their written assessment Monday, "With 100% ownership of Cingular, we expect AT&T to truly operate as one company, developing integrated wireline/wireless services and price packages that will be tough for other wireless carriers to duplicate in its region."