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Cingular Forced To Stop TDMA Prepaid Sales

Oct 18, 2005, 2:05 PM by (staff)

Updated. A federal court today has ordered that Cingular and other carriers which use BCGI's prepaid management services must immediately halt selling prepaid phones. The court upheld earlier decisions from both local and federal courts that BCGI had violated Freedom Wireless' patents on pre-paid phone sales and management. Cingular must immediately stop selling TDMA prepaid service to new customers, but can continue providing service to current customers for 90 days. However Cingular and BCGI must pay Freedom 2.5 cents for every minute current subscribers use during that time. Although TDMA customers only account for a small portion of Cingular's prepaid business, Cingular's TDMA prepaid accounts for 70% of BCGI's business. The court also added legal files to the fine BCGI must pay Freedom Wireless, bringing the total to $148 million, further compounding economic toll on the company. BCGI has said it will now appeal the case to the US Court of Appeals - the highest authority for patent cases.

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Comments

This forum is closed.

This forum is closed.

SmartAccessCCrep

Oct 18, 2005, 2:12 PM

Ouch!

Well what do u think Cingular is going to do now?

yunaderis

they probably will continue to sell phones and subscription services to people not from the ghetto 😳

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sangyup81

It's BCGI that's screwed. 🤣

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tropicalhaven

Well, they now have legal mandate to stop [some] TDMA service. I think they'll follow through.

thegreatrep

Cingular won't be that affected (I admit some 400,000 customers is still a lot however), but I wonder what boost mobile and the other smaller carriers that use BCGI will do?

Cingular has wanted those TDMA holdouts to move to GSM for sometime now, ...
(continues)

gtb_ajt

Oct 21, 2005, 9:42 PM

WTF!!!!!!!

Ok what the heck is going on!! I work for stupid cingular and they don't even have the nerve to tell the employess that there taking away TDMA prepaid!!
But At least it will not affect the current official cingular cust, because they are on the GSM network, thank goddness for that!!

sangyup81

The article doesn't state when Pre-Paid sales on TDMA have to stop. I'm sure any reasonable judge would give some time for Cingular to change their system.

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longbordr52

Oct 18, 2005, 7:57 PM

uh oh, question:

I still have a KIC plan, bought right before they created the whole Gophone thing. Its GSM, not TDMA, so does this whole thing even affect me? If they stop my service, will they compensate with something else?

Justin Cingular

It seems you shouldn't be affected by this situation, atleast not directly. But I doubt cingular would raise the rates. If anything they may lower the rates to try and keep the customers. I'm glad I'm not going to be working for cingular when the 90...
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