Say goodbye to Cingular, hello AT&T

Three years after AT&T Wireless subscribers found their cell-phone carrier was Cingular Wireless, Cingular Wireless subscribers will soon be learning to call their carrier AT&T.

In the latest step of a confusing dance of brand names in the wireless world, AT&T Inc. will start its planned rebranding of Cingular next week, just two weeks after AT&T gained full ownership of the nation's largest wireless carrier through the purchase of BellSouth Corp.

The awareness campaign will include inserts with monthly bills and promotional materials at Cingular stores advising customers of the coming change.

Cingular's name and orange "Jack" logo, both created six years ago, will continue to appear alongside the AT&T brand and blue "globe" logo until the company is confident customers won't be confused by the switch, AT&T announced yesterday.

But by midyear, it's "likely" the Cingular name and symbol will be disappearing from ads, promotional materials, trucks, bills, stores and buildings, said Wendy Clark, senior vice president of advertising for San Antonio-based AT&T. The only remnant to survive the transition will be the orange, which will be used for accent and background coloring for AT&T's cellular products and services.

"Any time you see us talking about wireless you'll see us use orange," Clark said.

But as cell phone users tend to buy new handsets only once every couple of years, it's likely that tens of millions of Cingular's roughly 60 million subscribers will be toting around devices with the Cingular name and logo for years to come.

In fact, some Cingular subscribers are still carrying phones bearing the name and logo AT&T Wireless -- artifacts of a tongue-twisting corporate saga.

Today's AT&T was known as SBC Communications until late 2005, when that regional Bell company acquired its former parent, the AT&T Corp. long-distance business. Several years before that deal, the AT&T long-distance company spun off its cell phone business, AT&T Wireless, as an independent concern. Then, in late 2004, AT&T Wireless was acquired by Cingular, which had no real desire or legal right to adopt a brand still owned by the AT&T long-distance business.

Instead, Cingular parents SBC and BellSouth decided to unify the companies under the Cingular brand, neither one realizing they'd all soon be merged into one company called AT&T.

source : ASSOCIATED PRESS