As is often the case, confidence comes with success.
Enter Cingular Wireless L.L.C.
After a couple of quarters of robust customer growth befitting the nation’s largest wireless operator, Cingular has decided to start charging its legacy TDMA and analog customers a $5 per month service charge to maintain their antiquated service. The charge will impact nearly 5 million presumably loyal Cingular customers who apparently did not get the memo that the carrier’s GSM network was the cat’s meow.
Now, if you do the math, this little surcharge will generate around $25 million per month for Cingular, or $300 million per year, depending on the stubbornness of those customers.
(If Cingular was really interested in getting these customers to switch networks they should jack the charge up to $1,000 per month, or start a rumor that as TDMA and analog networks age, they begin to interfere with television remote controls and that people with those phones will soon have to start getting off the couch to change channels. Just an idea.)
Presumably, many of these customers are so-called low-value subscribers who have stuck with their voice-only plans and brick-like handsets because they were perfectly happy with the potentially greater coverage provided by their handset’s TDMA/analog capabilities. Some of those handsets could also be taking up valuable real estate in the glove boxes of cars across rural America.
Cingular has justified the move by noting that continuing to support these customers on a network the carrier is trying to shut down does not make sound financial sense, and that the 8 percent of Cingular customers with TDMA/analog service used only 2 percent of the carrier’s total network minutes.
While some have questioned Cingular’s proactiveness in trying to nudge these customers into the 21st century, I applaud the decision. What is with these customers who only want their phone to make phone calls? Don’t they know the wonders of wireless data? About downloading the latest hip-hop ringtones, first-person shooter games and all the other cool applications only available from more advanced GSM-based devices? Making telephone calls is so 20th century.
I’m sure my enthusiasm is backed by most of Cingular’s competitors. Verizon Wireless Chief Executive Officer Denny Strigl is still giddy over the throngs of customers that jumped the AT&T Wireless Services Inc. ship to join Verizon Wireless following AWS’ local number portability debacle.
And with Cingular now basically brushing aside nearly 5 million of its loyal customers, Strigl is not going to sit idly by and let them sign a new contract with Cingular.
