No senior discount for older Cingular phones
Cingular will soon start charging users of older phones a $5 monthly fee, in an effort to get them to upgrade to newer technology.
The fee, which will start appearing in September, will apply to consumers whose phones do not support GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) technology. Cingular said that per-customer costs to support analog and Time Division Multiple Access, or TDMA, access were rising considerably as the number of those users dwindled.
Cingular is required by the Federal Communications Commission to keep providing analog service until early 2008 so long as it still has customers with those phones. It has said it plans to continue to support TDMA until it makes the analog switchover.
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