189,000 new customers is laughable.
Verizon added net subs of 800,000 new customers
Nextel Added over 5-600,000 new customers.
AWE(AT&T) 283,000 Net revenue was 3.9 billion higher then numer 2 Cingular.
T Mobile next week.

While Cingular did not have a net loss this 1/4 their net adds are absolutly horrible compared to competition. JAX should be fired!

This is a reflection of the worst damn rate plans around. Cmon 50% more minutes but no night and weekends. HA HA. Who are they fooling?
Cingular is only service provider without Unlimited Night and weekends.
Cingular needs to get their head out of their butt and reorganize their rate plans.
I read their 50% more advertising and the ads are so confusing.
Too many choices.
They should give the night and weekends and choose between rollover, m2m and or 50% more minutes. Why should you have to pay for N/W minutes.
If you select the old plans you don't get enough competitive minutes compared to other carriers and you don't get unlimited night and weekends.
Helppppppppppppppppppppppppp Were confused!

which, at this time and place is a tad more important to overall corporate survival. If the company was to continue to bleed money there would be nothing for new subscribers to use

The plans here in CT are good I can`t complain, but the GSM service is BASURA...

I thought for sure with the new plans they would have 500,000 new net ads.
I am a little surprised at the number. Analyst were looking for 250k net new subs.
These numbers still are not good enough for a future IPO. Considering other peerss had much larger numbers it will be tough for investment community to jump on Cingular bandwagon.
Results Results Results are whats demanded.
Stan has his work cut out for him. Peer performence is very important. When your number 2 and you only grow business by 189 k while number 1 grows business by 800k that is a problem.
Number had over 5 billion in revenue and number 3 had 3.9 billion revenue. Number 2 had 3.5 billion revenue.
Number 1 has 33 million subs
Number 2 has 22 million and
Number 3 has 21.5 million subs.
There is a true disconnect with number 2.

Number 2 needs to get down, get tough and get dirty.

Number 2 Cingular is still headed in wrong direction. Stan, and the rest of his gang want to make a lot of money. The only way they can accomplish making more money is to lay off more people, generate more revenue and give away the most amount
of minutes.
Stay Tuned this will get very interesting!

Why hasnt it occured to people yet that not everyone wants unlimited nights and weekends ? I dont! Im glad Im not paying for something I dont use

Only real way to make money if your Stan is to get this company puplic. IPO needs to happen. Stock Options etc.......
But how will Stan create shareholder equity?
Answer
Reduce SG&A--------------- Which means cut cost, expenses , employees and offer more minutes.
America has voted and no Cingular Employee Job is safe. I know this sounds mean but its reality.
Sales and General Administrative Expenses must come in line with the business plan.
Andy Wilson always says do more with less and he's right!

So on April 30th you join Verizon and good luck to you!
see you on the Verizon board............................................. .

How do you see this getting interesting? Know about some upcoming plans the rest of us would like to know?

While their subscriber add wasn't as good as desired, a plus is a good thing. How much longer will it be until subscribers adds aren't a good measure of growth because of market saturation? Maybe we're still not there yet...

What is everyone else doing right to have so many more people signing up with them and not with Cingular? Is it the mixed GSM/TDMA and possibly confusion in different rate plans, phones, coverage maps? Is it a lack of good phones? Is it really the rate plans? Is it CS, as discussed before (though I've had good experiences lately)?

We'll see if more minutes will be what draws people in... though more SMS and data plans would be helpful too (as a geek). :-)

doclloyd,

To answer your question from my point of view..



It is a little bit of all of that except for customer support. I have to say that Cingular has the best support staff I have dealt with. Other than that, everything just sort of stinks. I have been with Cingular (Bell South Mobility) since 94' and for the first time I feel like I am with the wrong company. The GSM service is going to be nice but I can't wait it out while they get their stuff together. I loose most of the calls I make and have to redial over and over to complete a call. If you depend on your phone for business you know this will not work. Signal wise, my TDMA phone had a much better signal and can't remember loosing a call unless it was really bad. One problem, the call quality was bad.

About the rate plans...I understand them very well. I can tell you exactly what you’re going to get without any confusion. They are so clear that I can see I pay too much for the minutes I get. Other carriers are just offering more for less. When you do, word gets around and most business is "word of mouth". Another point about subscribers....When you have one person in a multi-user family that makes the choice to stay or go you can loose 2,3,4, or maybe 5 subscribers at a time. Take my family for instance. I have two phones here, four at my parent’s house, and three at my in-laws. NO, not all the phones are mine but the reason they all have them with Cingular is me. That makes nine phones that may be leaving very soon for a better rate plan or plans.

To keep from rambling on any further, CS has been nothing but good. GSM service for the time being stinks in this area on my new phone and others that have GSM that I know. Calling plans are a big factor but mean nothing if the service stinks. I think it fair to pay more for better quality, who doesn’t? But how long will it take to get there?

Sorry for the long post and if you made it this far, you really have nothing to do. HA HA Just giving readers a hard time. Be Good

Some of you forget that we are in a recession and the wireless market is just about saturated, not to mention that the competition is extremely high. All these factors combined are not a good formula for good numbers with any company. Just look at Sprint reporting losses like crazy. In these times, there will necessarily be winners and losers.

The US is not near saturation. According to CTIA, we're at about 50% penetration ( http://www.wow-com.com ) 144.8M users

Saturation would be some countries in Europe. 70-75%+, so to reach that level there are still millions more customers to go....

Here's what I think Cingular's major problems are:

- Above all else, the GSM/TDMA split network and conversion and associated issues (SuperHome plans in new GSM markets not including all areas old TDMA local plans did, selling GSM-only phones in converted TDMA markets before the entire Cingular network and roaming partners in nearby markets are GSM -- IMO, Cingular should be selling GAIT phones exclusively right now, service quality issues caused by carving off TDMA bandwidth to provide for GSM, what seems to be a brute-force approach to "minimize roaming costs" at the expense of coverage, customer satisfaction, etc. [and Cingular still has never addressed quite longstanding issues with total lack of coverage/roaming in some rural areas -- Cingular still refuses to roam with certain carriers, particularly VZW, even if those carriers are the ONLY carriers in a given area])
- Phone-based data services that are all but a joke (atrociously poor selection of WAP content e.g. no "agreement" with AOL so no AIM/etc., ridiculously high rates for GPRS in GSM markets/being unable to GPRS roam in areas where Cingular roams on T-Mobile, virtually no Java phones/apps to be found, etc.)
- No "claim to fame"/poor marketing and innovation -- AT&T has mMode, VZW has "best network" and GIN, Nextel has DC, T-Mo and SPCS have camera phones, T-Mo has CZJ, SPCS has Vision - what in the world is Cingular's "claim to fame"? Rollover minutes it is NOT, IMO...
- A bad rap for CS -- but the major complaint seems to be almost always limited hours compared to other carriers, not ineffective/rude CSRs
- Lingering bad tastes in people's mouths in CA, southeast TN, and other areas where Cingular has been oversold and/or has had poor coverage

-SC

Well I can speak from experience. Around here, nobody (and I mean NOBODY) is getting Cingular.

Why?

Simple.

They have the smallest and most uninspiring lineup of tepid feature-poor phones of any carrier out there.

In my area, these bland phones must compete with:

-Sprint PCS, whose CDMA phones are always cutting edge...where they work

-Verizon, which, although it has a rather uninspiring phone lineup, offers extensive coverage and more feature-rich phones, even if they are bland.

-AT&T Wireless, which went from TDMA to GSM 9 months ago or so, and has been aggressively adding exciting new feature-rich phones to their lineup

-T-Mobile, with its unbeatable SMS plans, and wide variety of phones (also they have an established network of non-direct dealers who are at liberty to sell GSM phones beyond what T-Mobile itself has.

Yep, around here, Cingular is dead last. Their GSM system is up, though, so hopefully things will get better.

Wait, no, I'm a competitor! die, Cingular die!

As I said, 50% is near saturation because growth dramatically slows down....just read some experts articles. 70% is well into saturation.

Othe ways to measure Cingular besides subscriber growth:

ARPU-Cingular $47 Lowest of all the majors Thats average revenue per user.............not a good number

Revenue-22.1 million subscribers 3.5 billion revenue
ATT- 21.5 million- 3.9 billion
Verizon 33.4 million- revenue 5.5 billion

Things will get interesting