Back in the early 1990s, the cellular telephone system in the United States was a little more regulated. Each territory was assigned two slots for cellular providers – one was usually taken up by the local incumbent local exchange carrier and the other was opened up for independent cellular providers. So far as I remember, there were two major brands of cellular service – Cellular One and U.S. Cellular. If I remember correctly, one of them was merely a franchised brand name while the other was an actual nation-wide provider.
Today we don’t see these brands any more among the cellular providers – Verizon, AT&T, Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, Nextel. I assume they got swallowed up by one of the modern players. Does anyone have any more specific information about what happened to Cellular One and U.S. Cellular?
Cellular One renamed themselves UniCell. Actually, a UniCell employee told me that the UniCell name had been in use longer than the Cellular One name, and the company decided to consolidate all their operations under the one name. However, this was a renaming, not a merger or buyout.
So Cellular One still exists, it’s just called UniCell.
(slight hijack – rather a habit of mine, I’m afraid)
Cellular One seems to me to be a somewhat better name to market your a under: Cellular One – OK, I get it, the One to go to for cellular services. Unicel? A one-celled animal?
What were the marketroids thinking? Or were they thinking?
In the early days, there was a “B” carrier and an “A” carrier in each market. The “B” license automatically went to the local telco if they wanted it. If not, it was available to someone else.
The “A” license was there to make sure the local telco had some competition in the fledgling industry. To market their collective interests, many of the “A” carriers created a brand name to market under called “Cellular One”. In addition to many upstart companies, “A” side licenses were also held by Telco’s that operated out of market–for instance in Chicago, the “A” license was held by Southwestern Bell (later SBC), who rather than using the Southwestern Bell name, used Cellular One as the marketing name.
Eventually, one of the largest “A” side carriers, McCaw Communications, sold out to AT&T who rebranded their Cellular One properties as AT&T Wireless. Fast forward about 8 years later, and as consolidation began to happen, Bell South and SBC decided to consolidate their businesses. Rather than use the Cellular One name, which I believe they each used in different markets along with Southwestern Bell and Bell South Mobility, they rebranded everything as “Cingular”.
CellularOne did not become UniCell and did not become part of Cingular/AT&T Wireless.
My understanding is that they give out regional franchises, rather than being a national company. I’m pretty confident they’re still an independent company since I have a CellOne phone. UniCell also offers competing service in this area.
