Cingular Cuts Minutes in National Plan

Reuters | August 20, 2002

[HAL9000]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Cingular Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. wireless telephone company, on Tuesday said it cut the number of minutes included under its national price plans that allow customers to make phone calls from anywhere in the country.

The Atlanta-based firm said it is no longer including 3,500 night and weekend minutes in its national plans and cut its anytime minutes by 100 to 1,000 minutes depending on the plan.

For example, customers signing up for the $29.99 national plan will now get 150 anytime minutes instead of 250 minutes while the $199.99 plan now includes 2,000 minutes instead of 3,000.

"It really puts us in line with other similar plans offered by the competition," Cingular spokesman Clay Owen told Reuters.

The joint venture between BellSouth Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. made the changes on Sunday at the same time it introduced a new service that allows customers on their local service plans to carry over unused minutes into the next month.

The reduction in minutes comes as competition is heating up in the wireless industry. Nearly half of Americans now own cell phones, and it has become more difficult to add each new customer. Companies have been trying to differentiate themselves from their rivals through prices, services and cell phone selection while still increasing revenue.

Owen said Cingular expects to also add a new national network plan at a lower rate in the future in which customers will be able to make calls from anywhere in the country as long as they stay on Cingular's network.

Cingular's current national plan allows customers to make calls from anywhere in the country on any network without incurring roaming charges.

Cingular's rivals already have national network plans in place.

Owen also confirmed Cingular cut the amount of night and weekend minutes under its local price plans to 3,000 minutes from 3,500 and increased the roaming charge to 79 cents a minute from 69 cents.

Customers pay roaming charges when they use their phone outside of the designated coverage area.

[TheLurkerX]

If they try to cut my minutes and charge me the same amount, i'll tell them to stick their contract in their @ss. They've done nothing but screw up my service from day 1 anyway. I think I've had maybe 4 months out of 18 so far that I haven't had to call them and have them fix some screw up.

[Bamaconservative]

It must be luck of the draw. I had a similar experience with Verizon and changed to Cingular. No problems so far.....