at@t vs. cingular

[Guest grumpy_old_technobyte]

Hey, new forum arena!

Cool!

anyways, I am a at@t wireless diehard. Havent switched to the cingular side yet. but now really considering since the at@t network really sucks now (like tmobile did). I have bad signal strength anywhere and everywhere. From dropped calls to "signal busy" errors when trying to call to poor reception when I used to have full coverage.

I went to the at@t store where i first bought my smt5600,thats now a cingular store, and talk to sales rep. about switching over. He says that at@t network isnt being maintained and cingular network is top priority. Eventhough at@t bought out SBC who owns cingular is going to switch cingular back to at@t network name, he suggested going to Cingular to get better coverage. I am so glad I unlocked phone.

This is ridiculous that even though I am at@t, I have to go to cingular, which in near future will be back at@t wireless.

Point is, if you are in usa, get unlocked phones so you can switch between networks freely w/o having to purchase new phones locked to one network.

[Guest kugeln]

What is this switching thing? Is it about switching your account to cingular, or having your handset flashed with a Cingular rom? If it's the latter, it's simply a matter of manually setting the network to Cingular... unless they have something wierd going on with AT&T account holders.

Edited May 19, 2006 by kugeln

[Guest xda_gangsta]

Hey, new forum arena!

Cool!

anyways, I am a at@t wireless diehard. Havent switched to the cingular side yet. but now really considering since the at@t network really sucks now (like tmobile did). I have bad signal strength anywhere and everywhere. From dropped calls to "signal busy" errors when trying to call to poor reception when I used to have full coverage.

I went to the at@t store where i first bought my smt5600,thats now a cingular store, and talk to sales rep. about switching over. He says that at@t network isnt being maintained and cingular network is top priority. Eventhough at@t bought out SBC who owns cingular is going to switch cingular back to at@t network name, he suggested going to Cingular to get better coverage. I am so glad I unlocked phone.

This is ridiculous that even though I am at@t, I have to go to cingular, which in near future will be back at@t wireless.

Point is, if you are in usa, get unlocked phones so you can switch between networks freely w/o having to purchase new phones locked to one network.

I would say its the same thing dont forget AT&T bought out Cingular! But if the network isn't good and it wont cost u much to switch then why not? CINGULAR, RAISING THE BAR :) lol

[Guest agentxx]

i am still currently on an att plan as far as I knw here they are basically the same network your phone should switch between the old att and cingular networks so the network coverage should be similar

[Guest pavankp]

i am still currently on an att plan as far as I knw here they are basically the same network your phone should switch between the old att and cingular networks so the network coverage should be similar

I was on an AT&T plan for a long time after the acquisition. I saw no difference when I switched to a Cingular plan. Soon after the merger, my phone would show me routinely that I was roaming (whenever it was using a Cingular tower instead of the AT&T ones). In the original poster's case, it sounds like this is not happening -- his/her phone is not automatically roaming between AT&T and Cingular networks as it is supposed to.

BTW, Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, not the other way around. Cingular was owned by SBC and BellSouth. Later, SBC bought "old" AT&T, and started calling itself the "new" AT&T. New AT&T (that is SBC) then went on to buy BellSouth. So Cingular's parent company is the new AT&T. Considering AT&T is a historically strong brand name, the new AT&T will probably re-brand Cingular Wireless as AT&T Wireless. If that happens, it will just be a name change (instead of Cingular, the company/service will be calledAT&T). What happened earlier was an actual merger, with two companies with different networks coming together and integrating their service.

Considering all this confusion -- and how it's going to get worse after the name change, it is anyone's guess when Cingular will make all existing AT&T customers move to the Cingular network. For the original poster, I would say, move to Cingular if you can't sort out the roaming issue.

Pavan