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Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cingular Wireless, a venture of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp., said on Monday it would start charging customers with older phones an extra $4.99 monthly fee as early as September unless they upgrade their phones as it moves toward using a single network technology. The biggest U.S. wireless service, said the fee would apply to about 4.7 million subscribers, or about 8 percent, of its 57.3 million customer base unless these users upgrade their phones. It is part of Cingular's plan to phase out phones based on older TDMA and analog technology, the technical standard for...

AT&T Wireless Self-Destructs The story of a botched CRM upgrade that cost the telco thousands of new customers and an estimated $100 million in lost revenue. Hard lessons learned. BY CHRISTOPHER KOCH Executive Summary Last fall, AT&T Wireless frantically tried to complete a CRM upgrade to Siebel 7. It had to be done in time to handle the customer service challenges accompanying a Federal Communications Commission deadline for allowing customers to change carriers without changing their phone numbers. The effort was a failure. Systems crashed and stayed down. Customer reps could not keep up, and angry customers abandoned the...