Cingular Wireless really wants to standardize its mobile phone network on GSM technology, and to do so, it really wants to shut off old-style analog cellular service on its network. Of course, the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that analog service has to keep running under February 2008 (in part to provide service to rural and other areas for which digital cellular service is not available). So Cingular is doing the next best thing: it plans to drive its remaining old-school users of Time Division Mutiple Access (TDMA) phones off the network by raising their rates in order to reduce its operational costs.
According to Cingular, it plans to start charging users of TDMA phone an extra $4.99 a month as early as September 2006 unless they upgrade their phone to new models which use GSM. According to Cingular, some affected customers will be eligible for discounted upgrades, but the move is estimated to impact about 4.7 million Cingular subscribers, or about 8 percent of the company’s customer base. Cingular notes that the quality of service offered by its GSM network is better than both its TDMA and analog networks, and the company hopes to be able to shut down its TDMA system in early 2008.
