The prepay system is something that I have been thinking about.

For cigular TDMA users........
Cingular basically doesn't worry about home rate area.
Anywhere you can get a cingular signal, you get home airtime rate.
So, for them, when cingular takes control of the systems,
you will be in your home area on any ATT TDMA system.

But now you will have a large coverage area on the east side of the USA,
and a large TDMA coverage area on the west side of the USA.
(That is far removed from the people on the east side of the USA.)
Will they just throw in the west coast coverage into the home air time area
for all the current TDMA prepay users.
Or will they have two different TDMA prepay home rate areas.
(ie) East and west coast prepay TDMA customers.
Or would they keep their system of east coast TDMA prepay,
and west coast GSM prepay.
Or will they finally use it as a chance to allow TDMA and GSM prepay
across their whole system?

For ATT wireless users........................
The "Free 2 go" local users
ATT uses a system that cigular abandoned a while ago.
The higher the value of card, the lower per minute rate.
There was so few people using it, that they phased it out.
And the prices are relatively the same as the
old cingular KIC one rate plan.
I don't really see cingular taking a step backward
by reconstituting that plan.
So... I think the Free 2 go users will be persuaded to
pick a more current cigular prepay plan.
And with the large cigular prepay home area,
I would say that people would accept it.
And considering that the cigular air time rates is a lot
lower for the normal value of prepay card that people buy.

The "Free 2 go" national users.........
I could see them keeping that plan, but with a fixed air time rate
that is not dependent on the value of card you bought.
Something like $0.65 cents a minute fixed rate, nationally
.
The GO phone users........
That will be a hard one
They could integrated the plans into their normal prepay system.
But.....
With the enlarged coverage area that will come with the cigular prepay
system,
they will have to figure out if those rates are profitable.
I could see them allowing the people to keep the GO phone plans,
but they would be limited to a restricted coverage area.
(The current coverage area you have now.)
Or they could force people to the normal cigular prepay plans.
(With a larger coverage area, but not as good a rate.)
Or they could come out with new cigular prepay plans that
would follow the same idea as the GO phone, but
with adjusted rates that would keep them profitable with
a larger coverage area.

Not for the short term- any company buying another is stuck with the
contracts they've engaged in.  Until the CallPlus reseller contract expires
(who knows when!) Cingular'll be "stuck" with us.

Realistically, whenever that contract expires we'd have been done for
anyway.  I don't suspect AT&T would have renegotiated any expiring TDMA
reseller contracts while they were trying to phase out TDMA.   In recent
years AT&T had cooled on the concept of airtime resellers.  They once
thought it would be an excellent revenue stream, like with landline long
distance, but it never really generated any significant revenue.  I don't
think any new ones had been contracted with in the last few years, and,
AFAIK, AT&T has been basically waiting out the expiration of the current
reseller contracts.

Hi Lena,

I emailed eCallPlus yesterday when I heard about the merger going
through and asked them what they thought. I got this response from
them today:
"As far as we know, the Cingular buyout will not have an effect on
eCallPlus.com"

I hope they're right! But as someone else said, any changes would
probably not be seen for a while.

JIM

You know, there are no answers for any of these questions just yet. Speculating
on the answer to something like above is a waste of bandwidth.

Only one thing is positive at this point, there will be changes to offerings.
Nothing more can really be said until we see what transpires.

--
John S.
e-mail responses to - john at kiana dot net