Clear as mud :) so does this mean "Cingular" wireless service is going to ever get any better in the Shreveport Bossier area ?

Cingular getting better
 

That I cannot answer. There is no technical reason it cannot, AT&T owns plenty of spectrum and has more than enough tower leases.

The original problem was that while ATTWS and Cingular used the same protocol and frequencies, the tower equipment was different and incompatible. the Cingular tower equipment was actually newer and able to support more people in the same bandwidth (a.k.a. cheaper for the company) which is why Cingular GSM phones defaulted to Cingular towers, even though it may have been getting a better/stronger signal from an ATTWS (which was owned and operated by the same company).

So did that merger actually go through? I didn't know the Bellsouth deal was consumated.

LOL, wow and all that after breaking up the AT&T monopoly into 5 regional bells years ago. I guess what goes around comes around.......

BS/ATT Merger
 

No, the BellSouth/AT&T merger hasn't actually gone through yet, it has only been announced. It has yet to be approved by the FCC, but should any day now.

Also, the original breakup was into 7 RBOCS (or nine, depending on what you consider a breakup). Now there are four, soon to be three.

Many thanks for the clarifications joepole! What I do remember is that AT&T was once Bell Labs who invented the transistor (before I was born) and Western Electric who made the phones.

Bell Labs
 

Yep, Bell Labs was part of AT&T until the breakup, at which point it became part of Western Electric (which changed its name to AT&T Bell Labs or something similar). It also kind of sort of split into Belcore, which provided Bell Labs-like services to the RBOCs, but neither company has been anywhere near as important/influential as Bell Labs was back in the day.

They didn't just invent the transistor there, they invented UNIX (and c), lasers, faxes, and wireless networking, just to name a few things.

By the way, Bell Labs became Western Electric, which became AT&T Bell Labs, which spun off into Lucent, which sucks now and is being bought by Alcatel.

Your telecom knowledge is considerable! We should have drinks! My telco experiences are more "post 1996" but I do love the old lore. Yea it's sad how Lucent spun downhill. Alcatel, has a pretty good name as I recall. I think all the original BellSouth DSLAM's were Alcatel, but I could be wrong. Isn't Alcatel a UK company?

You must work for a wireless company or Centurytel, or Bellsouth or something. ;)

Alert Alert
 

Telco Geek Alert !


LOL


My brother worked for AT&T Research & Development for years.. does that count :)

As a child, I went on a field trip to Western Electric on Mansfield road. The plant was huge, and even had it's own cafeteria. All I remember is that the spokesperson said that there was enough concrete in the slab to pave a sidewalk from Shreveport to Baton Rouge. Now that's a lot of concrete! What is the old plant now? Anyone know?

Alcatel and AT&T site
 

Alcatel is a French company.

The old Western Electric/AT&T plant on Mansfield Road became Lucent technologies then (I think) something else unlrelated to AT&T, but nothing that ever used the full potential of the site.

It's available if you'd like to rent or buy it.

Top 5 uses for the old Western Electric plant:

5. Worlds largest self storage
4. Worlds largest indoor amusement park
3. World's largest indoor bass fishing pond
2. World's largest indoor zoo

And the number 1 use fo the old Western Electric plant:

1. Cell phone factory
(wouldn't that be something)

A Related Question?
 

I saw your thread and just had to ask, you mention AT&T, what about T-Mobile or Cigular?

The reason I ask is that we have tried both. Cigular's service was great, but we could not get a phone from them that worked. We ended up spending the last six months of our contract with defective phones before we gave up on them.

Our experience with T-Moble was even worse. Our phones apparently worked, but we seemed unable to receive hardly any incoming calls. Frequently outgoing calls were a problem and we were often blocked from using our phone with connection problems and error messages. We even went so far as to have some friends and family members stand next to us to try calling our phone (our phone fully charged, on, and in hand) and we could not get any calls from them. Their phone received messages that the number they tried to reach (us) was busy, server not available, and a host of other similar messages. We have since quit paying for our non-existant T-mobile service, quit using their phones, and refer other potential T-moble customers to other phone companies. We were just wondering if there were very many other similar stories out there. Thank you.

Verizon is the only way to go!! I switched to them 1.5 yrs ago and have nothing negative to say except $$$ but I guess the old saying goes, you get what you pay for? For this cell phone provider its totally true. I have 3 phones sharing 2000 min/month and pay 160.00

Believe you me.. went through 8 phones with Cingular. NONE OF THEM worked to my satisfaction. dropped calls, missed calls.. no signal etc etc etc etc.. lousy service over the phone. only other I tried when I bailed on Cingular was to go with Verizon, and I've been very happy with the "service" although they do cripple their phones somewhat.. compared to say cingular.. but I just needed a darn phone that would work, and Verizon has provided that. and yes they are more expensive than Cingular.

Tom, here is my take on this. If you are in Shreveport, your Cingular problems are not the phones but network related. It wouldn't matter how many phones you tried. I know one person who tried almost half a dozen phones with the same bad results. As for T-mobile, they are a MNVO (Multi Network Vendor Operator). That is, they do not own their own network but rather use Cingular's!! ;)