Cingular will be known as AT&T [not quite]

21 Nov 2005 | Cingular | 7 comments


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According to an article on USA Today, SBC, which owns 60% of Cingular is planning to rename Cingular Wireless to AT&T. Asked if the company planned to drop the Cingular name in favor of the AT&T brand, Ed Whitacre, the chairman and CEO of the combined company said, "Yes, we do."

AT&T's logo has been given a trim to gain a new 3D effect and instead of the capital letters, it will be spelled with lower-case letters.

UPDATE: Well, nobody would have expected this, but USA Today got the story all wrong. "We are continuing with the strong Cingular brand that we have spent the past five years building and promoting," said Cingular spokesman Clay Owen.

Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of SBC, which controls 60% of Cingular said that SBC will re-brand as AT&T, which already happened last weekend after SBC closed its $16 billion acquisition of AT&T Corp.

new att logo cingular wireless will be known as at&t

~ 7 comments ~

by andrea on Nov 21, 2005

i dont think this is a good idea CINGULAR has come to be known as one of the best customer care companies overall, this seems to a cust care rep that it will discourage customers from using us...

by lisa on Nov 21, 2005

I agree with what Andréa is saying CINGULAR has worked to keep its reputation on being one of the best in customer care and I think they should keep there name

by Kim Williams on Nov 21, 2005

I think this is the most stupid idea that this company has come up with. What is the reason for changing ATT wireless to Cingular and then change it back to ATT when 1)the migration of former ATT wireless customers to the Cingular Network is not fully done. 2)confuse the customer from going back and forth with names 3)degrade what little we have left of good customer service because of all the confussion in explaining billing, services and everything you can think of to customers. Cingular is not a name that carries either SBC or ATT so why mess with it? If it is because of the poor ratings we have in customer service.....change the policies for customer service allowing reps time to provide customer service instead of having to worry about stats to keep their jobs and you will see a HUGE rise in our ratings for customer service. As an employee of Cingular, I feel this is not a wise decision to change the name. Trying letting the people in high positions sit and do our job and have to explain all this to customers and they would think twice about doing it.

by Jac on Nov 21, 2005

I think AT&T will be a good change!!!
The colors are great!

by doug on Nov 21, 2005

I don't know what to make of this. some sources say that Cingular Wireless will take over the at&t name, others that SBC, it's parent company will.

by kev on Nov 21, 2005

Heh, well somebody over at USA Today is gonna get fired because of this screw up, right ?

by stanley on Nov 22, 2005

ok now that makes sense. Everybody out there is really confused about this! Seems that everybody picked up the source from USA Today and didn't relly care on checking it out.