T-Mobile buys Suncom
Looks like T-Mobile is expanding their share of the US market with a recent acquisition of Suncom. Suncom was one of the very few non-TMo Sidekick carriers. They’ve been assimilated and the best part? It only cost T-Mobile $1.6 billion.
via Reuters
September 18th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
So, this must be the reason why I started seeing “Cingular” on my sidekick last week.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Nope, seeing “Cingular” on the sidekick is nothing new; that’s been around since the SK2, and probably even longer.
Here’s the explanation I got. Several years ago, Cingular bought out AT&T Wireless (not to be confused with the “new” lowercase at&t). Since that meant that they suddenly had redundant towers (for example, a Cingular tower right across the street from a AT&T Wireless tower), they sold off the towers they didn’t need (apparently they kept the AT&T Wireless towers since they had better equipment, and sold off the Cingular towers).
Apparently, T-Mobile bought those towers, and never bothered to change the towers’ IDs, since it’s purely a cosmetic thing and only shows when a phone or device initially connects. So, when the Sidekick (or any other phone/device) connects to that tower, it says Cingular, and only after it registers with the rest of the network does it change to T-Mobile.
That said, please feel free to take all of this with a grain of salt, since I don’t know just how reliable my sources were. 🙂
September 18th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Then how come I’ve been trying to do the manual network selection since 2004, and my sidekick NEVER picked up the Cingular tower that is right front of my house while I had no service with T-Mobile at my house. I’ve been trying to do the manual network selection EVERYDAY for 3 years and it never have picked up the AT&T tower. Until last week, Tuesdday morning (the 11th) I saw “Cingular” on my sidekick, I jumped and screamed because I was excited. . . and I JUST heard about T-Mobile buying SunCom and I thought that would be the reason why I got Cingular last week since it’s NEW and I wasn’t able to use Cingular before T-Mobile bought SunCom? Plus, another reason why I thought it would be the reason was because Cingular, SunCom, and ATT all share the same tower that is front of my house. So. . . . I just want to know the exact reason why I’m getting Cingular now at my house and after calling T-Mobile many times, they still don’t know anything!! And, Cingular isn’t a brand name anymore, so maybe soon they’ll change from “Cingular” to “AT&T” on my sidekick’s display? But the good thing is, I finally have service at both my house and school since I had NO service before Cingular showed up on my sidekick’s display.