NEWS: Cingular Gets Approval for Acquisition Deal as Soon As 2004

Steven M. Scharf wrote:
> "Patrick Bosley" <[email protected]> wrote in message newsBosley-
>
>
>>Looks like they agree to me. One lists all losers, the other the B I G
>>losers. Sorry Cingular is listed as loser, can't you handle the truth?
>>Maybe not, since with your FAQs, you have a vested interest in Cingular.
>
>
> These were not my predictions of the winners and losers, they came from
> analysts. Different analysts predicted different results. All of the
> analysts predicted that Verizon would be the big winner, and T-Mobile would
> also gain. Where they differ is in the extent of the losses of the losers,
> Cingular, Sprint, AT&T, and Nextel.
>
>

Actually, a lot of analysts predicted that T-Mobile was going to be a loser.

==AD

---

› See More: NEWS: Cingular Gets Approval for Acquisition Deal as Soon As 2004

TMobile has some of the best backing in the industry. Even if it did
go away, there would still be Verizon, Nextel and Sprint (though maybe
not for long). I think as long as Verizon and Nextel would still be
around, 3-way competition would be enough to approve a merger.
>
> The government would never allow AT&T and Cingular to merge. It would
> destroy T-Mobile leaving them to brought out and then after, there
> will be one GSM provider in the country - a monopoly.

"Melee" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> The government would never allow AT&T and Cingular to merge. It would
> destroy T-Mobile leaving them to brought out and then after, there
> will be one GSM provider in the country - a monopoly.

A monopoly would apply to an industry, not the use of a particular
technology within an industry. Thus, there would still be Verizon, Nextel
and AT&T (ignoring the lack of Sprint here). That would not be a monopoly.

Tom Veldhouse

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Fri, 05 Dec
2003 15:59:06 GMT, James Tullin <[email protected]> wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>,
> "Steven M. Scharf" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> "Patrick Bosley" <[email protected]> wrote in message newsBosley-
>>
>> > Looks like they agree to me. One lists all losers, the other the B I G
>> > losers. Sorry Cingular is listed as loser, can't you handle the truth?
>> > Maybe not, since with your FAQs, you have a vested interest in Cingular.
>>
>> These were not my predictions of the winners and losers, they came from
>> analysts. Different analysts predicted different results. All of the
>> analysts predicted that Verizon would be the big winner, and T-Mobile would
>> also gain. Where they differ is in the extent of the losses of the losers,
>> Cingular, Sprint, AT&T, and Nextel.
>
>The figures are starting to trickle in.
>
>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...293&e=5&u=/was
>hpost/20031205/tc_washpost/a36853_2003dec4

Not really. As that article states:

It's unclear how many people have tried to switch between wireless
carriers, or from home phones to wireless carriers, since Nov. 24. On the
first day, TSI announced it received 80,000 number-switching orders, but it
has no released no information since.

The 350,000 number appearing later in that article is just an estimate that
appears to be little more than speculation.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Fri, 05 Dec 2003 13:10:02 -0600,
Aboutdakota <[email protected]> wrote:

>Steven M. Scharf wrote:
>> "Patrick Bosley" <[email protected]> wrote in message newsBosley-

>> These were not my predictions of the winners and losers, they came from
>> analysts. Different analysts predicted different results. All of the
>> analysts predicted that Verizon would be the big winner, and T-Mobile would
>> also gain. Where they differ is in the extent of the losses of the losers,
>> Cingular, Sprint, AT&T, and Nextel.

>Actually, a lot of analysts predicted that T-Mobile was going to be a loser.

Indeed -- there was no consensus. Steve gives new meaning to the word
disingenuous, citing only material he agrees with, and then disclaiming
responsibility, as if he's just an objective reporter.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

That is true. If you ask a person what type of technology his/her phone is
working on you will get a blank face answer.

"James Tullin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Melee <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > The government would never allow AT&T and Cingular to merge. It would
> > destroy T-Mobile leaving them to brought out and then after, there
> > will be one GSM provider in the country - a monopoly.
>
>
> You forget. It's Republicans running the FTC now. Most consumers don't
> care whether their phone is GSM or CDMA or TDMA or iDEN. They just want
> good coverage ad no surprises on their bill, and an 800 # with folks
> that are friendly and helpful.

"Aboutdakota" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> Actually, a lot of analysts predicted that T-Mobile was going to be a
loser.

The reports I read generally felt that:

a) AT&T would lose big time because they have a lot of very unhapply big
corporate customers that are upset over the deteriorating network caused by
the GSM transition. These customers are ones that very much do not want to
change phone numbers.

b) Sprint would lose big time because of their coverage issues and their
prices. Sprint is in financial trouble and faces a lot of problems from
affiliates as well.

c) T-Mobile would gain because of their lower prices; people are more
willing to tolerate poorer coverage if the price is low.

d) Cingular would lose because of the situation in the western region where
coverage issues have plagued them, as well as issues with the TDMA to GSM
conversion in other regions. OTOH, their rollover promotion is popular, and
in areas where AT&T and Cingular are the dominant carriers (800 Mhz)
Cingular will pick up market share at the expense of AT&T, so it could be a
wash.

e) Nextel would lose because of coverage issues coupled with PTT
availability from other carriers, even though the PTT operation of the other
carriers is inferior to Nextel's implementation.

f) Verizon would gain big time because of the quality of their coverage,
despite their higher prices, as well at their availability of PTT to attract
Nextel subscribers. Also Verizon benefits from their support of WNP (albeit
late) and their lack of extra non-governmental fees.

I don't think we'll really be able to see if these predictions are true
until we look at market share a year from now. As we've seen in the
newsgroups, many people who were planning to change carriers right away
found out that their carrier extended their contract without permission. We
could make guesses on market share for the 3Q2004 and see who's the closest!

Absent any mergers, my predictions are:

Verizon: 31% (+2%)
Cingular: 18% (no change)
AT&T: 16% (-2%)
T-Mobile: 12% (+2%)
Sprint-PCS: 14% (-1%)
Nextel: 9% (-1%)

Number portability came at a very bad time for AT&T and Cingular; if they
could have delayed it a couple of years until their GSM networks were
converted to 800 Mhz, and were at the level of their old TDMA networks, it
would have helped them immensly.

Long term, Sprint PCS and T-Mobile are not viable carriers by themselves and
they will have to merge with other carriers or go out of business.

Steve
Cell Academician

References:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...llphone06.html
http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/Busin...ory/75010.html
http://www.app.com/app2001/story/0,21133,862084,00.html
http://money.cnn.com/2003/12/04/tech...qualcomm.reut/

Western is a CDMA carrier for their own customers. They support TDMA and now
GSM for roaming. They are adding GSM to their towers using 1900 mhz spectrum
acquired from T-Mobile (formerly voicestream who was at one time a
subsidiary of Western).




"Aboutdakota" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>
> WAW wrote:
> > I think that if anything happens, it will be a Cingular/AT&T Wireless
> > deal. Here's what I see AT&T Wireless doing to make themselves
> > attractive (off the top of my head):
> >
> > -Dropping their IT Payroll down to almost zilch. Brings up the
> > profitability.
> > -Selling off all overseas stakes in other providers. Ditto.
> > -Recent focus in financials on profitability. They've moved from
> > "here's how many new people we're getting" to "here's how much we're
> > making per subscriber".
> >
> > I also found it interesting that Rogers in Canada will be dropping the
> > "AT&T" from their name, again some time in mid '04.
> >
> > Finally, I think it would be easier to work around NTT's 16% stake in
> > AWE than D. Telekom's hold on TMobile.
>
> Yes, however, if there was a Cingular/AT&T WS deal, I think that the
> newly formed wirless carrier would probably ally T-Mobile more than
> crush it (at least for now). Cingular/T-Mobile have some attractive
> deals going on with each other, and I think the new company and T-Mobile
> would "swap" coverage areas, meaning that T-Mobile would be responsible
> for building out into more rural areas in some instances, and Cingular
> would be responsible to build out in other areas, thus helping spread
> the GSM coverage.
>
> I also think that Cingular is very interested in Western Wireless.
> Western Wireless, being primarily a rural wireless service provider, is
> not very profitable, if at all (depending upong the time). I have heard
> rumours that Western Wireless is going to sell out to Cingular, and
> suddenly right after those rumours, Western Wireless announced it is
> going to build an 850/1900 GSM/GPRS network (interesting, isn't it?).
> the acquisition of Western Wireless, which almost all of the markets it
> operates in do not overlap with Cingular markets, would hardly be a
> problem with 850 A/B spectrum cap. It would also give Cingular a huge
> advantage to have a much larger native network.
>
> Not only that, but AT&T and Cingular are Western's largest roaming
> partners, and AT&T alone controls almost 20% of Western's revenue from
> roaming from its own customers. If a Cingular/AT&T deal were to arise,
> Western Wireless would be at the mercy of the new carrier not only for
> revenue, but also for allowing its customers to roam. Of course,
> there's also the idea of a hostile takeover, too.
>
> If Cingular/AT&T/Western Wireless could all unite, I think we would see
> (after the bugs worked out) a massively large, stable, native network
> coverage area.
>
> ==AD
>

> I don't think we'll really be able to see if these predictions are true
> until we look at market share a year from now. As we've seen in the
> newsgroups, many people who were planning to change carriers right away
> found out that their carrier extended their contract without permission. We
> could make guesses on market share for the 3Q2004 and see who's the closest!

Market share only means one thing in the viability of a wireless
carrier: the number of cutomers.

It doesn't really matter how many customers a company has, the only
thing that matters is that the company is not losing money all the time.
I'm pretty sure that a carrier with $15 million customers, but loses
$10 billion dollars per year will not last as long as a small regional
carrier with maybe 100,000 customers, but makes $1 million per year.

Albeit, you cannot fully analyze the impact that WNLP until it has been
implemented in the entire country. A majority of the U.S. (at least by
area) does not enjoy the luxury of WLNP. I know of many rural areas
where Verizon will lose most of its customers to AT&T in a certain market.

==AD

> It doesn't really matter how many customers a company has, the only
> thing that matters is that the company is not losing money all the time.
> I'm pretty sure that a carrier with $15 million customers, but loses
> $10 billion dollars per year will not last as long as a small regional
> carrier with maybe 100,000 customers, but makes $1 million per year.

Yeap. :-)

> Albeit, you cannot fully analyze the impact that WNLP until it has been
> implemented in the entire country. A majority of the U.S. (at least by
> area) does not enjoy the luxury of WLNP. I know of many rural areas
> where Verizon will lose most of its customers to AT&T in a certain market.

It will come time for the other leaf to turn.

This session of WLNP will show what carriers people think
is the best in the top 100 metro areas.

But the next session will show what carriers people think
is the best in the rest of the united states.

I think the winners of that will be the local mom and pop carriers.
And the larger ones that try to provide good useable service
to everyone in their area, not just the people in the large cities.

WW currenty has just over 100 towers in 5 midwest states live with GSM 1900
for ROAMING purposes only. WW has zero future plans to allow their own
subscribers to use their GSM Network. FYI WW uses Cellular A side for all of
their Cellular One markets and has 1 PCS market in Amarillo Texas operating
under the Western Wireless brand name.


"Aboutdakota" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>
> Clay wrote:
> > Western is a CDMA carrier for their own customers. They support TDMA and
now
> > GSM for roaming. They are adding GSM to their towers using 1900 mhz
spectrum
> > acquired from T-Mobile (formerly voicestream who was at one time a
> > subsidiary of Western).
>
>
> Do you have any idea where these GSM 1900 areas are? So far, I only
> know of GSM 850. If I was told correctly by a Cellular One
> representative, WW is mostly cellular A and B across the board.
>
> ==AD
>

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Sat, 06 Dec 2003
06:48:45 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf" <[email protected]> wrote:

>"Aboutdakota" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>
>> Actually, a lot of analysts predicted that T-Mobile was going to be a
>>loser.
>
>The reports I read generally felt that:

>[SNIP Steve's own predictions under guise of "reports I read"]

>I don't think we'll really be able to see if these predictions are true
>until we look at market share a year from now.

There is of course both a short-term impact and a long-term impact. The
former won't take a year to become clear.

>As we've seen in the
>newsgroups, many people who were planning to change carriers right away
>found out that their carrier extended their contract without permission.

I've seen no such evidence. Regardless, unilateral contract extensions aren't
legally binding.

>We
>could make guesses on market share for the 3Q2004 and see who's the closest!

We could. But I doubt we'd agree on the numbers, so what's the point?

>Absent any mergers, my predictions are:
>
>Verizon: 31% (+2%)

Steve forecasts Verizon as a winner. What a shock. (Not.)

>Cingular: 18% (no change)

So Steve now concedes that Cingular won't be a loser.

>Number portability came at a very bad time for AT&T and Cingular;

Yes and no. While ATTWS is clearly struggling, Cingular is clearly doing
pretty well (as you now concede).

>Long term, Sprint PCS and T-Mobile are not viable carriers by themselves and
>they will have to merge with other carriers or go out of business.

Perhaps. Time will tell.

>Steve
>Cell Academician

Modest as always.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Sat, 06 Dec 2003 12:59:35 -0600,
Aboutdakota <[email protected]> wrote:

>> I don't think we'll really be able to see if these predictions are true
>> until we look at market share a year from now. As we've seen in the
>> newsgroups, many people who were planning to change carriers right away
>> found out that their carrier extended their contract without permission. We
>> could make guesses on market share for the 3Q2004 and see who's the closest!
>
>Market share only means one thing in the viability of a wireless
>carrier: the number of cutomers.
>
>It doesn't really matter how many customers a company has, the only
>thing that matters is that the company is not losing money all the time.

Amen.

--
Best regards, HELP FOR CINGULAR GSM & SONY ERICSSON PHONES:
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/#Cingular>

"Aboutdakota" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> > I don't think we'll really be able to see if these predictions are true
> > until we look at market share a year from now. As we've seen in the
> > newsgroups, many people who were planning to change carriers right away
> > found out that their carrier extended their contract without permission.
We
> > could make guesses on market share for the 3Q2004 and see who's the
closest!
>
> Market share only means one thing in the viability of a wireless
> carrier: the number of cutomers.

Not true. Market share has a lot more impact than you realize. For national
carries there is a critical mass to have an operating profit, and unless
there are extenuating circumstances, the larger the market share, the larger
the operating profit. You amortize all your fixed costs and your marketing
costs over a much larger number of customers. Extenuating circumstances
include an abnormally high level of capital expenditures, such as what
occurred with AT&T and Cingular in their transition from TDMA to GSM. What's
especially interesting is that the most profitable carriers are not
necessarily the ones with the highest ARPU.

> It doesn't really matter how many customers a company has, the only
> thing that matters is that the company is not losing money all the time.
> I'm pretty sure that a carrier with $15 million customers, but loses
> $10 billion dollars per year will not last as long as a small regional
> carrier with maybe 100,000 customers, but makes $1 million per year.

This is not a good comparison. The small company likely has no competition
and is making big bucks from both roaming charges and from not having to
compete with lower rate national carriers. There are always profitable
niches that a national carrier can't fill because they'd have to charge the
same lower rates in a rural area that they charge in an urban area, but the
rural area requires proportionally a lot more infrastructure (especially for
digital, not so much for AMPS).

And if it didn't really matter how many customers a company had, then
Cingular wouldn't be so hot to acquire either T-Mobile's U.S. operations, or
AT&T Wireless.

There are other reasons that market share is important as well: Read:

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...iewId=news_vie
w&newsId=20031203005437&newsLang=en

"According to Wolff, the only other variable that is directly related to
interest in switching is brand size. Among customers of the leading brands,
interest in switching declines as market share increases. This could be a
market factor moving the category toward consolidation."

As to the winners and losers so far:

http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?n...ews&bt=verizon

Winners: Verizon, Nextel
Losers: AT&T, Cingular
Neutral: Sprint, T-Mobile

> Albeit, you cannot fully analyze the impact that WNLP until it has been
> implemented in the entire country. A majority of the U.S. (at least by
> area) does not enjoy the luxury of WLNP. I know of many rural areas
> where Verizon will lose most of its customers to AT&T in a certain market.

Highly unlikely. If Verizon is that bad, and AT&T so good, in those areas
then the majority of those customers will already have left Verizon despite
having to change numbers. We've seen this in the San Francisco Bay Area,
where Cingular experienced very high churn, including a lot of customers
that simply paid the early termination fees. An article in the Oakland
Tribune stated: "According to an internal Cingular memo "Profiling the
Killer -- Churn" cited in papers filed last month by the <California> PUC's
consumer protection and safety division, about 19.5 percent of Cingular
customers ended contracts within 4 to 12 months of initiating service,
despite having to pay early termination fees."

But just for the record, what are those "many rural areas?"

> And if it didn't really matter how many customers a company had, then
> Cingular wouldn't be so hot to acquire either T-Mobile's U.S. operations, or
> AT&T Wireless.

Wouldn't established spectrum be enticing for Cingular which is not
spectrum rich like other carriers?

> There are other reasons that market share is important as well: Read:
>
> http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...iewId=news_vie
> w&newsId=20031203005437&newsLang=en

"Part of the customer churn issue is attributed to differences in
customer satisfaction," said Wolff. "Almost a third of Verizon Wireless
customers say they are completely satisfied. Only 25 percent of the
users of other major brands say they are completely satisfied."

I would like to see a geographical representation of such. I would be
willing to bet that the only reason Verizon Wireless is at the top is
because a majority of its customers are in densely populated urban areas
that are covered very well. I would be willing to bet that a majority
of area of the VZW network covers consists of primarily of unhappy rural
customers, where as Cingular and AT&T *could* be distributed, having a
much larger "market share" of rural customers. Peiople can play with
numbers.

> "According to Wolff, the only other variable that is directly related to
> interest in switching is brand size. Among customers of the leading brands,
> interest in switching declines as market share increases. This could be a
> market factor moving the category toward consolidation."
>
> As to the winners and losers so far:
>
> http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?n...ews&bt=verizon

"touted as net winners". There are no official figures of churn rates
there. It does not say how many customers any company gained nor lost.
It is not proof, it is speculation.

> Winners: Verizon, Nextel
> Losers: AT&T, Cingular
> Neutral: Sprint, T-Mobile
>
>
>>Albeit, you cannot fully analyze the impact that WNLP until it has been
>>implemented in the entire country. A majority of the U.S. (at least by
>>area) does not enjoy the luxury of WLNP. I know of many rural areas
>>where Verizon will lose most of its customers to AT&T in a certain market.
>
>
> Highly unlikely. If Verizon is that bad, and AT&T so good, in those areas
> then the majority of those customers will already have left Verizon despite
> having to change numbers. We've seen this in the San Francisco Bay Area,
> where Cingular experienced very high churn, including a lot of customers
> that simply paid the early termination fees. An article in the Oakland
> Tribune stated: "According to an internal Cingular memo "Profiling the
> Killer -- Churn" cited in papers filed last month by the <California> PUC's
> consumer protection and safety division, about 19.5 percent of Cingular
> customers ended contracts within 4 to 12 months of initiating service,
> despite having to pay early termination fees."
>
> But just for the record, what are those "many rural areas?"

Washington, Oregon, and Northern California area few places. Of course,
adding coverage and then removing, then adding it again and removing it
again doesn't give Verizon Wireless much credence in some of these areas
(all coverage that has been disputed by customers has been on the
America's Choice calling plan). Overall, Verizon Wireless will probably
be a winner, because it does have the largest network. However, it
noted that in many markets, Verizon Wireless will be a loser.

To see Verizon's latest removal of coverage from the America's Choice
plan, click or copy and paste these links:

http://cell.uoregon.edu/loss_questionmark/
http://www.meetmyattorney.com/cellul...es/000347.html