Cingular completes GSM integration

Two years after its acquisition of AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless has finished integrating the two carriers’ GSM networks—known as the “blue” and the “orange” networks, respectively—creating a unified “gold” network of almost 47,000 cell sites across the country covering more than 270 million people.

The network integration started out slowly as Cingular dealt with the enormous task of moving AT&T Wireless’ substantial customer base to Cingular plans and contracts, and did away with many of AT&T Wireless’ handset lines. The chaotic transition resulted in slower subscriber growth for the first few quarters after the merger, compounded by subscriber losses AT&T Wireless recorded before the deal closed, leading to speculation that Verizon Wireless would overtake Cingular’s newly gained No. 1 carrier spot. But Cingular regained its footing in mid-2005 and has routinely added more than 1 million net customers each quarter as the carrier began integrating AT&T Wireless sites into Cingular network footprints market by market and sometimes vice versa.

At Cingular’s July Q2 earnings call, Chief Operating Officer Ralph de la Vega announced that only 12% of AT&T Wireless’ cell sites remained unconnected to the unified network, and its back office and billing integration were almost complete. De la Vega projected year-end for complete integration, meaning it beat its own timeline by a quarter.

In all, Cingular is scheduled to spend $13 billion in capital investments in 2005 and 2006, paying not only for the complex integration of its GSM and legacy Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks and its pre-paid and post-paid operations, but also its new rollout of UMTS/High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) networks. Cingular today said it now had 3G services up and running in 44 metropolitan cities and in 105 markets with populations of 100,000 or more.

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