Cingular Wireless L.L.C. started out in 2001 as a company with a network that was more than two-thirds TDMA and analog technology. Now, the company has indicated that it is on track to turn off both its legacy TDMA and analog networks in 2008.
Stan Sigman, Cingular’s chief executive officer, said that 2008 was the turn-down date for both networks during a keynote address at last week’s TelecomNext conference in Las Vegas. The federal government requires carriers to support their analog networks through 2008.
Cingular decided in late 2002 to start overlaying its TDMA network with GSM technology. The nation’s No. 1 carrier also previously sold its Mobitex network and turned off its CDPD operations. Turning off the first- and second-generation cellular networks would narrow Cingular’s managed networks to its GSM/GPRS/EDGE core network and expanding UMTS/ HSDPA operations. The carrier is busy expanding the footprint of its new HSDPA high-speed wireless network, which it rolled out in 16 markets last December. Cingular’s stated goal is to have its UMTS/HSDPA offering available in the top 100 markets by the first quarter of 2007.
When Cingular acquired the former AT&T Wireless Services Inc. in late 2004, the company gained an additional 21 million customers, with the vast majority on AWS’ legacy TDMA network. Since that 2004 acquisition, Cingular has migrated about 7 million of those customers onto its GSM plans and phones, and some of those customers have churned to other carriers. While company officials declined to give specifics on the number of remaining TDMA customers, Cingular noted in its most recent quarterly report that 95 percent of its network traffic during the fourth quarter ran over its GSM network, and 86 percent of its customer base is equipped with GSM handsets. That would equate to more than 7.5 million customers still using TDMA devices.
Bill Hogg, vice president of network services for Cingular, declined to specify migration rates from TDMA to GSM, but said that since the merger, “It’s slowed down a little bit, but it still happens at a very good clip every month.”
Cingular has been working to integrate the former AWS network with its own: swapping out components so that all equipment is alike and turning off about 10,000 redundant TDMA sites in 2005. At the end of last year, Cingular had rationalized the 47 TDMA network operations that overlapped with the AWS properties. On the GSM side, the company used modeling to figure out which legacy Cingular and legacy AWS sites to keep.
Cingular noted in mid-2004 that it needed around 8 megahertz of spectrum to comply with the government’s analog service requirements. The carrier added that its TDMA network required around 22 megahertz of spectrum to continue supporting its customer base.
As the turn-off date gets closer, Peter Jarich, principal wireless infrastructure analyst for Current Analysis, said he would expect to see protests from small pockets of consumers who have been unwilling to give up their TDMA phones.
“Will we hear stories saying, `Oh no, they shut down the network and I can’t get access?’ Or, `They stranded a whole bunch of people?’ Sure,” said Jarich. “We will hear those. They will be vocal, they will be upset, but I’m sure there’s not going to be a lot of them.”
Between the HSDPA deployment and the remaining network integration and migration, Jarich said, Cingular “has clearly got a lot going on, but they’ve pulled it off to date. … We tend to forget that the move to GSM was not that long ago, so they’ve made pretty good progress in getting a lot of people from one network onto the other in a short period of time.”
In addition, Cingular has said that it plans to add between 4,000 to 5,000 cell sites to its network by the end of 2006. According to recent company press releases, some specific areas the company is concentrating are:
c California, with network spending estimated at $800 million, down slightly from the $1 billion Cingular put into its California networks in 2005. Most of that investment is expected to be used to upgrade AWS’ GSM operations in the Golden State so Cingular can progress in migrating its customer base from its legacy GSM operations that Cingular agreed to sell to T-Mobile USA Inc. for $2.4 billion. Similar to last year, however, the carrier plans to put more than half the money into its network in the greater Los Angeles area, resulting in nearly 350 new cell sites there.
c New York and New Jersey, slated to receive $500 million in network improvements and UMTS/HSDPA deployments, including 250 new cell sites.
c Florida, particularly around the Orlando market, with more than $360 million in network spending is planned for the state, including UMTS/HSDPA deployment and network integration to be completed by the end of the summer.
c Tennessee, where Cingular plans to spend $235 million on its network this year and add 113 cell sites.
Hogg said Cingular will update its migration and integration process in its quarterly reports. The company has scheduled the release of its first-quarter results for April 19. RCR
