“Your world just got a lot bigger,” Cingular and AT&T Wireless ‘cell phone’ customers are being told, and the TV advertisements proclaim that they can now talk with all 46,000,000 subscribers “for free.”
Well, it’s true that the two companies are now one and have a large combined subscriber base. And it’s also true that all those people now have the opportunity to talk with each other without using any of their plan minutes. “Free.” “Mobile to Mobile.” Call my wireless phone, talk with me for an hour and still have all your minutes remaining. Yes, Virginia, that’s a good thing.
The key word there is opportunity, though. From the large brochure:
If I don’t have Mobile to Mobile calling on my current plan, will I automatically get it?
No, but adding it to your existing plan or switching to a plan that includes Mobile to Mobile is easy. To learn more, visit www.cingular.com.
If you’re a Cingular customer, or if you were an AT&T customer, do yourself a big favor and stop by your local Cingular store and look at the new contract offerings. If you’ve got multiple phones in your household, be sure to ask about the FamilyTalk plans, too. You won’t regret it.
btw, I called them ‘cell phones’ above, though I’m told that what most of us use these days – digital phones using GSM – aren’t really “cellular” at all. It’s the common term, though. Like ‘dialing”‘a phone… are there any phones with real dials anymore?