Cingular and T-Mobile end marriage of convenience
We could usually care less about all the insider baseball stuff about the cellphone business, but since this might actually affect real people it seems worth mentioning that T-Mobile and Cingular are ending the deal they cut three years ago where each carrier gained access to the other's cellular network. Three years ago this marriage of convenience made sense since neither had enough spectrum to cover
the entire country — T-Mobile needed coverage in California and Nevada and Cingular needed coverage in New York. But now that they've bought AT&T Wireless, which has its own network on the East Coast, Cingular has realized that they don't need T-Mobile anymore and is bringing their little arrangement to a close. This doesn't mean that suddenly T-Mobile customers on the West Coast are going to find themselves without service, since T-Mobile is spending $2.3 billion to buy the spectrum they need from Cingular, but despite assurances to the contrary, Om Malik predicts that the next few months could be a little rough for subscribers in California while they make the transition.
