Executives from Cingular Wireless, which acquired AT&T Wireless two years ago, came to Chicago Tuesday to celebrate the last phase of integrating the two cell-phone networks.
Chicago was the last market in the nation to see the old AT&T network combined with the old Cingular network, said Ed Reynolds, president of Cingular’s network operations.
“It seems kind of funny to celebrate someplace for being last,” said Reynolds, “but Chicago marks the end of a very long journey for us.”
Since AT&T and Cingular merged in October 2004, the company operated two networks, both using compatible GSM technology, Reynolds said, but the networks didn’t work together.
“We had an orange network and a blue network,” he said. “If a customer started a call in a place where the blue network’s signal was strongest, that’s the network he’d be on. Even if he traveled to a place where the blue network’s signal was weak and the orange network’s signal was strong, he’d have to stay on the blue because we couldn’t hand off calls between the two networks.”
In the past two years, Cingular engineers and technicians have shut down about 12,000 cell sites owned by Cingular/AT&T because of overlap.
“Sometimes they were using the same tower, or maybe they were only a few hundred yards away from each other,” Reynolds said.
The company also built 6,000 new cell sites and now has about 47,000 sites operating nationwide. All are integrated within a single network.
“This enables our customers to get the full benefit from all our network,” said Terry Stenzel, president of Cingular’s Illinois and Wisconsin markets.
Besides GSM service, Cingular operates a network serving older analog and TDMA phones. Reynolds said this accounts for about 7 percent of Cingular’s customers, but only 1 percent of network usage. That network will be phased out in 2008 as Cingular moves all its customers to the GSM network.
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jvan@tribune.com
