Cingular Announces Surcharge for Non-GSM Customers
July 31st, 2006Reuters reported today that Cingular plans to charge subscribers with older, TDMA and analog style handsets a new $4.99 monthly surcharge. Cingular is the only provider currently charging an additional fee to customers for use of the older technology.
It is part of Cingular’s plan to phase out phones based on older TDMA and analog technology, the technical standard for the first cellphones produced more than 20 years ago. Cingular has been working for years to phase out these technologies in favor of GSM (Global System of Mobile Communications), a newer technology that is the world’s most popular wireless standard.
The new fee is expected to generate an additional $23.5 million in revenue per month, which Cingular states is needed to support the older more expensive technologies. Like other U.S. cellular carriers, Cingular is required by the FCC to keep providing analog service until early 2008 so long as it still has customers with those phones.
Although the company is not required to continue providing TDMA service, it has no plans to turn off that service until the analog phaseout because both use the same portion of Cingular’s network.
