The History of the Knot, AT&T Mobility

 

Many jokes and some confusion have arisen from the AT&T/Cingular/AT&T sell, merger, purchase and rebranding. Just ask Richard Childress, the driver of NASCAR car Number 31. What sticker will be on the car and is it legal? But in everyday life customers are sometimes questioning the stability of a wireless carrier which many may have had and enjoyed for years. So here is an overview:

 

1983 to 1984 - FCC deregulates Ma-bell Company AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph) and Splits it into AT&T long distance and seven local phone companies, two of which are South Western Bell Corp. (SBC) & Bell South

1994 - Purchases Craig McCaw's Cellular One and renames it AT&T Wireless

2002 – SBC & Bell South merger their wireless holdings to form Cingular

2004 – Cingular purchases AT&T Wireless from AT&T and rebrands both networks as "New Cingular Wireless Service, Inc."

2006 – AT&T Buys SBC & Bell South and rebrands everything, Long distance, Local, Yellow Pages and Cingular Wireless back to AT&T. Technically the name for AT&T cellular service is now AT&T Mobility (not AT&T Wireless). The actual wireless rebranding date is not until 2007 and occurs nationally on the same Friday the iPhone is launched in stores.

2007 – AT&T Mobility purchases Dobson Communications which is a wireless carrier operating under the Cellular One brand but more importantly is the brand owner.

 

So basically we have the entire circle of life for AT&T Started out as one company, bought Cellular One was split up or sold off almost all of its part and has slowly remerged back into it original giant. AT&T is now the largest wireless provider in the country. As a side note on the new NBC TV Show Journey Man the main character travels back through time. In the present he owns an Apple iPhone (currently this phone is under a 5 year exclusive contract with AT&T Mobility). He travels back into the early 90's and 80's. At one point he goes into his apartment and gets an old Motorola DPC 550 flip phone because his iPhone has no service. The no service situation is accurate because AT&T (McCaw/Cell One) was AMPS in the 80's early 90's. They converted to TDMA/CDPD in the latter 90's then to GSM in the 2000's; so the iPhone works off of technology not available in the states at that time. However, technically speaking a customer could have obtained service and an account number with the wireless carrier (Cellular One) in the Baltimore/DC area as early as 1989 and have continuous service with that theoretical account until the present as long as they upgraded equipment and billing systems along the way. So theoretically the oldest wireless account on a singular (no pun intended) wireless network would be 18 years. So the Journey Man could have had the same number in 1994 with "AT&T" then as he does now.