AT&T Wireless Services

AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., formerly part of AT&T Corp., was a wireless telephone carrier in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol "AWE", as a separate entity from its former parent.
On October 26, 2004, AT&T Wireless was acquired by Cingular Wireless, a joint venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth, to form the largest wireless carrier in the United States at the time. On 2004-11-16, AT&T Wireless stores were rechristened under the Cingular banner. The legal entity "AT&T Wireless Services, Inc." was renamed "New Cingular Wireless Services, Inc."^[1]
In late 2005, SBC (the majority partner in Cingular) acquired the original AT&T, and rebranded as "the new AT&T". Cingular became wholly owned by the new AT&T in December 2006 as a result of the new AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth. After the merger, Cingular was renamed AT&T Mobility in early 2007 and remained the largest wireless carrier until 2009 when Verizon acquired Alltel to retake its position as the number one carrier.

History

AT&T Wireless began as McCaw Cellular, and was based in Redmond, WA, United States. It was founded by Craig McCaw.
In 1994, AT&T purchased McCaw for $11.5 billion and kick-started their cellular division with 2 million subscribers.^[2][3] That year, Steven W. Hooper, a long time McCaw Cellular executive, was tapped by AT&T to be the CEO of the newly acquired division. Under his direction, AT&T Wireless grew to be the nation's largest cellular provider by the end of 1997, at which point Hooper and many of the remaining McCaw era executives departed. By 1999 and 2000 the cellular industry began to consolidate and Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless became the first and second largest national carriers.
The year 1999 also brought John D. Zeglis as chief executive in October, followed a few months later by Dan Hesse's departure, who had been head of the division since 1997. Over the next year and a half all six McCaw regional presidents left the declining company.
In April 2000, AT&T Wireless became a separately traded entity with the world's largest initial public offering at that time. Just over a year later in July 2001, AT&T Wireless became a separate company rather than a division of AT&T Corp.
In 2003, AT&T Wireless was granted several mobile licenses for Caribbean countries including Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.^[4] AT&T Wireless' decline climaxed in 2003 with the FCC mandating the allowance of porting numbers to other carriers. AT&T Wireless experienced a mass exodus of many customers who were fed up with years of degrading service and poor coverage. By the end of 2003, AT&T Wireless faced a public relations nightmare when a new system for adding subscribers and porting numbers in/out was implemented and botched. Realizing that it faced an impossible situation, AT&T Wireless Services, Inc began accepting bids in early 2004 to be acquired.
As of January 1, 2004, the largest single shareholder of AT&T Wireless was Japan's NTT DoCoMo, which was one of the first to place a bid to buy the company.
In the middle of 2004 much of the Caribbean operations and Bermuda were agreed to be sold to Digicel Group.

Acquisition history

On February 13, 2004, AT&T Wireless accepted bids for acquisition of the wireless company. The two top bidders were British carrier Vodafone and American competitor Cingular. Cingular was owned by two Baby Bells; 40% by BellSouth and 60% by SBC Communications, Inc. Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon Wireless and had it succeeded in the bid, their share of Verizon Wireless would then have been sold to parent company Verizon Communications. Cingular emerged victorious February 17 by agreeing to pay more than $41 billion, more than twice the company's recent trading value, to acquire AT&T Wireless. Some analysts have said that although Vodafone, the world's largest mobile operator, was unsuccessful in acquiring the company, it was nonetheless successful in forcing a competitor to overpay for the acquisition of AT&T Wireless.
The sale received US government approval and closed on October 26. The AT&T Wireless brand was retired by Cingular on April 26, 2005, six months after the close of the merger. This was per a pre spin-off agreement with AT&T Corp. that stated that if AT&T Wireless was to be bought by a competitor, the rights to the name AT&T Wireless and the use of the AT&T name in wireless phone service would revert back to AT&T Corp.
AT&T Wireless' prepaid services, Go Phone, was adopted by Cingular Wireless after the merger closed, and is still in use today by the current AT&T Mobility.