Cellular One
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cellular One is the trade name of the cellular service offered by several mobile phone providers, most recently Dobson Cellular. It was originally the trade name of one of the first mobile telephone service providers. In 1977, the American Radio Telephone Service and Motorola formed Cellular One to offer service to the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. In 1984, cellular service began in the Baltimore/DC area.
The Baltimore/DC service, and the rights to the name Cellular One, were sold from Metromedia to Southwestern Bell in 1987. In 1989, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems and McCaw Communications formed a partnership called Cellular One Group. In 1992, Vanguard Cellular Systems joined the group. In 1995, Cellular One opened up membership in the partnership to all A-side providers. Under the U.S. AMPS allocation, A-side providers were independent wireless operators, while B-side providers were usually affiliates of the local landline telephone company. A new slogan was also developed, "Cellular One: Clear Across America", recognizing cellular's national reach, although there were very few national plans at this time. In 1995, Cellular One affiliates had over 5 million customers and affiliates' towers served approximately 69% of the U.S. population. [1] Also in 1995, SNET joined the partnership. Not all A-side carriers participated: most notably, L.A. Cellular, in the nation's second largest market, Los Angeles, never participated in Cellular One, and did not have agreements with Cellular One for some time. Many McCaw markets switched to the AT&T Wireless name when that was introduced, and McCaw dropped out of the partnership. Western Wireless joined the partnership in 1999.
When SBC Communications and BellSouth merged their wireless operations into Cingular Wireless, the Cellular One group name became the sole property of Western Wireless
The Cellular One brand name was also used by Dobson Cellular on the US West Coast and in Alaska. In December 2005, Dobson purchased the rights to the Cellular One name from Alltel (which had purchased Western Wireless in August). However, their services were completely unrelated. Dobson uses a TDMA and GSM network; Western Wireless used a CDMA network.
[edit] External links
- Dobson Cellular One homepage
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| Major network operators | |
| Alltel · AT&T Mobility (Cingular) · Sprint Nextel · T-Mobile · Verizon Wireless | |
| Minor and regional network operators | |
| Cellular One · Cellular South · Centennial Wireless · Cincinnati Bell Wireless · Cricket Communications · Edge Wireless · MetroPCS · nTelos · Revol · SouthernLINC Wireless · SunCom · U.S. Cellular · Unicel | |
| Mobile virtual network operator | |
| 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless · Amp'd Mobile · BeyondMobile · Boost Mobile · Disney Mobile · Hawaiian Telcom · Helio · Jitterbug Wireless · Jump Mobile · Kajeet · Net10 Wireless · Qwest Wireless · TracFone · Virgin Mobile · XE Mobile | |
