Cingular phasing / forcing out ATT SIM use?

Just to share my experience with an unlocked Cingular branded V551 w/ ATT SIM Card.

I was holding out as long as I could with my ATT Plan. I have been using V551s (unlocked) with my ATT SIMs for 1.5 years without any major issues.

Recently, I have been getting notes "UPDATE FAILED" or "INSERT SIM" on the phones. Sporadic areas I am in daily I am unable to make calls out "CALL FAILED - RETRY".
This includes my office park.

I contacted Tech Support and the story I got was the SIM updates they were pushing out (updates for merging ATT / Cingular towers) were not applying to my SIM as the phone was not designed for ATT SIM? I got some incompatability song and dance.

After some 'assertive' discussion and time consuming manipulation, I was able to wrangle a Cingular contract at a rate within a few bucks of my ATT plan. So finally, I am migrating (got new phones - V 557s as well - FREE w/ rebates).

I expected this would eventually happen, that Cingular was finding a way to displace ATT holdouts. There may have been a way around it, but at least now I have a competitive plan, new equiptment and 64K SIMs. For me, it was time to migrate.

I am wondering if other areas are experiencing issues with ATT SIMs offerering less coverage / usage / capability?

Could this truly be the means for which Cingular muscles out the ATT holdouts???

You know, it's funny that in less than a year from their merger, Sprint and Nextel have already combined billing systems and are rolling out with CDMA/iDEN devices seemlessly and yet Cingular cannot get AT&T Wireless towers to work with Cingular towers.

It's the lack of foresight and a terribly managed system that creates this problem. If the company wasn't too busy popping champagne bottles and bathing in piles of burning $100.00 bills, they might've been on the ball... (So yeah, a lot of people get this problem).

Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, I had decided my sporadic ATT service made it time to migrate to Cingular.

The rep that made the deal, and arranged the shipment of the phones was a breeze. Then it started to unravel.

The phones arrived and I took them to a Cingular outlet (as instructed) to be activated. No Go. It was a problem migrating the accounts and phones could not be activated. Nice....after telling me they have done 'millions' of ATT to Cingular migrations, hey still cannot seem to make it work. Also, hey bounced me between 2 Cingular outlets and 2 phone reps (one majically disconected as I was explaining the painful, long, arduous ordeal...I was shouting..."Can you here me NOW!"). Also, the line about transfering ATT SIM data onto the Cingular SIM....cow patties. Cannot do it, will not do, someone else has the equiptment today, you didn't buy them from us (no, I bought them from,,,ummm,,,CINGULAR)...blah, blah blah.

Finally I call Cingular CS again. I seem to do well when I get the Canadian call center (Personally, those Canadian CS reps have the ABILITY to listen without trying to get you off the phone and make you start all over with another round robin account rep game). This Canadian rep (Garnett) even called me back the next day to be sure the migration transaction was finalized. Thank you to the Canadian CS Center!

So now all 3 lines are activated and working. My coverage is full bars all the way. Even an area, local, known to be a wireless dead spot, had coverage...I am pleased.

Next is to write CS to tell them how difficult they made it for me to STAY a Cingular Customer! I spent 15.5 hours over 7 days to get this done. Anyone else see something WRONG with that? But I will also include in my writing CS that Garnett in the Canada CS Center was the best CS I have ever encounterd. He needs to be recognized, cloned and paid very, very well.

Let us hope now I do not have to deal with Cingular for anything but paying my bill!

En Guarde ATT holdouts, Cingular has no clue how to 'win' you over (even though you ALREADY are their customer).

Just from my limited local experience with AT&T's GSM service. I have to say that the AT&T network in my area is superb, with one exception.

I know this b/c for x-mas 2yrs ago my dad and I bought my mom an AT&T Go Phone Nokia 3590, since then I have had numerous opportunities to "experiment" with her service (I am an avid user of mMode when I get the chance).

Since the merger we have noticed a significant degradation of service in a few areas near where we live. ("Raising the bar" my foot.) Being a little adventurous, I figured out how to unlock my mom's phone a few months ago and was able to go into her settings and manually revert back to the old AT&T network. Works quite well again overall, except for one spot, which has always been bad.

============
Just a quirky note though, perhaps someone else could explain this one to me:

When I went to change my mom's settings, the network selection list came up as:
"CINGULAR"
"CINGULAR"
"T-MOBILE"

I was able to figure out that the 1st, "CINGULAR" was the old AT&T b/c when that one is selected, it pops up saying "Home system selected," I assume this of course b/c it was originally a locked AT&T phone.

Anyone ever heard of or had any experience with this?

I was under the assumption the the "old" AT&T Blue towers were re-branded "CINGULAR" and the original Cingular Orange towers were "CINGULAR WIRELESS" ??? What gives?

This is exactly how I operated the last year and a half with my unlocked V551. I could read the Cingular, Cingular Wireless (ATTWS) & TMobile networks. I would go to Network Setup and select MANUAL. Then I would lock it on Cingular Wireless (ATTWS) and the phone worked fine at full strength.

As time progressed, the coverage of ATTWS was decreasing and the phone would jump to Cingular, with 2 or 3 bars. As soon as I could lock it back to Cingular Wireless I would have better reception. But as I mentioned in my opening post, it began to get worse in my area.

Now I have my new Cingular (Orange) SIM and and phone the service / coverage is excellent...full strength!

It just seems Cingular is pushing out the ATT customers (in my market anyway)....and making the migration to Cingular as painful as possible.

I suppose that is what is going on. I have not heard of that happening here though (Austin), other than CS making life misreble begging you to migrate. Then again, I really only have one side to this, as I only have extensive background knowledge with my mom's GSM service, and my friends at school.

Ohwell, at least I still have some time think about who I will move up to, (two years) when Cingular de-activates the TDMA service with AMPS. That will be a sad day.

I've had my same phone that I bought when I was a freshman. I've kind of grown attached to it, (and its superior coverage

) I'll be depressed when I finally have to move on.

LONG LIVE TDMA!!! <as he begins looking for a new phone and carrier>
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TampaMike:
With your moto, in Tampa, was the old ATT network listed as "Cingular Wireless" on your phone? I find that strange. Perhaps I got the rebranding mixed up, or maybe it is not the same nationwide. Or perhaps Nokias don't like really long netowork names and that is why "Wireless" didn't show up on my mom's phone. I dont know.

Last edited by FlyerTDL on Sun Apr 02, 2006 2:39 am, edited 1 time in total

By the way neek, In your post you said:

Cingular changed the ATT network o read Cingular Wireless around January of 05. The network labels were jumping back and forth for a few weeks in the 1st attempt to integrate the towers.

The current integration attempt seems to be disabling some ATT users in sporadic areas. Unless you have an ATT SIM in an ATT phone, you cannot read the SIM updates they are pushing out. I bought the V551 unlocked to make use of Bluetooth in my Acura.

By the way, the network renaming was not specific to phone brand, but may have varied depending on the Cingular / ATT market.

Ok, thanks, that answers my question.

Cingular phasing / forcing out ATT SIM use?

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