Cingular Buying AT&T Wireless
 

Cingular Wireless won the bidding war to acquire AT&T Wireless Services for nearly $41 billion in cash, a deal that would create the nation's largest cell phone company.

Combined, Cingular and AT&T Wireless will have 46 million subscribers, enough to leapfrog Verizon Wireless' market leading customer base of 37.5 million.

Cingular, a joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., said its winning bid was for $15 per share, an amount that would value AT&T Wireless at $40.7 billion. Cingular will also assume $6 billion of debt owed by AT&T Wireless.

The agreement, subject to the approval of AT&T Wireless shareholders and regulatory authorities, may be the largest all-cash buyout in U.S. history, said David Caouette, spokesman for AT&T Wireless.

The combined company will carry the Cingular name and once a deal is approved, billing and other operational functions will be merged, though there will be no immediate impact on customers, said Ralph de la Vega, Cingular's chief operating officer.

Wow. Now does that mean AT&T will start looking after their long distance customers a bit better, or does this mean that AT&T is starting to go downhill and needed the $$?

Not only is cingular probably the biggest company, they also probably have the largest cases of identity theft fraud subscriptions on their network in my opinion based on my experiences..

When I called to have an account closed that was opened in my name fraudulently they said "let me guess, the fraud came from florida" you know you have a major fucking problem when you know where the fraud comes from...

i'm gonna guess that the service will go downhill (what do they care about service when they will have more money then god and possibly gates). i shut my acct with at&t years ago because every month i would have a 2.00 swing on my bill when i never used my cell. when i questioned the rep about it, he told me they had to make money somewhere.

think about it, if every month they charge customers anything from 1 cent to 2.00 over, what kind of profit does that bring? insane.... i switched to verizon and monitor my bills more closely now.

I smell a multibillion dollar charge in 2006 and huge goodwill line items for the next 5-10 years.

This is just the beginning. Somebody else will merge. I was reading an article that stated Nextel was on Sprint PCS shopping list. I doubt Verizon sits by and just allows Cingular to bypass them either.

I tried to get Cingular but when I went to their web site... they did not cover anything in Arizona... So, either their web site needs to be updated... or they do not cover the area their commercials say they do... I had to go with T-Mobile instead... been happy so far... but I really liked the roll-over minutes... that is why I wanted cingular so bad.

cingular is going to be the next mabell of phones. now all they need to do is get larger coverage areas.

cingular wired to at&t is gonna be awesome too, because cingular has more GSM towers than at&t, and in the last 6-12 months, at&t made some gsm major roaming agreements ... so the combined network probably will surpass verizon in terms of coverage/quality :thumbsup

:thumbsup

Yea I can see AT&T going down, I saw that start happening 6 months ago!

jDoG

A couple of my friends work at ATT Wireless, they highly recommended if you have a Wireless phone, to move to a new provider before the merger. :2 cents: