Today RCR Wireless News is reporting that AT&T will drop the Cingular Wireless brand name in 2007 – surely not a surprise to many who suggested this when they heard SBC was buying AT&T.  While I’m not sure how this will play out in the end, I believe that AT&T is making a mistake.  With all the effort and dollars invested in the Cingular brand they now decide the old AT&T Death Star is a much more vibrant entity in the minds of customers.

Cingular has worked expanded their brand in the public mind share, they’ve successfully rolled out EDGE services network wide, expanded the network footprint for GSM 850 & 1900.  The only area that they have left to improve significantly on is their customer service.  The Cingular brand is youthful in comparison to AT&T Wireless.  Many mobile users were stung in the conversion from AT&T Wireless TDMA phones to Cingular GSM phones and they won’t soon forget the experience.  I think it’ll take a much more expensive sales job to win these customers over (again) to the AT&T brand when they are beginning to be satisfied with the Cingular service.

Many people also like to have a delineation between their land line and wireless providers.  It demonstrates their power of choice, if only to themselves.  Personally, I think the old AT&T is long dead.  The latest ‘3.0’ rendition of the company is really a renamed SBC, and I’ve never had a good experience with them.

So what do you think of this latest play in the AT&T name game?