Building on the strengths of its two partners and promoting the individual customer to a new level, Cingular Wireless - the joint venture between the wireless units of BellSouth and SBC Communications - was launched October 5 as President and CEO Stephen Carter unveiled the name for the nation's second largest wireless carrier. Cingular Wireless will have approximately $12 billion in annual revenue and is one of the 150 largest companies in the country.

"Cingular is a name that shows the importance of the individual customer, as well as the unity of this joint venture," said Carter. "The name is about simplifying the wireless industry, offering personal service and standing out in a high-growth industry." 

BellSouth and SBC will continue marketing under their existing names for the rest of 2000, adding the Cingular name as a co-brand until the end of the year. Early in 2001, the 11 different wireless brands offered by BellSouth and SBC around the U.S. will all become Cingular Wireless.

To help customers during the transition to Cingular Wireless, both BellSouth and SBC will offer identical national and regional rate plans. The national products are being sold as "Digital Edge USA." Wireless Internet service is being marketed as "My Wireless Window."

BellSouth and SBC will share control of Cingular Wireless. BellSouth's ownership of the joint venture is 40 percent, and earnings will flow back proportionately.

BellSouth is offering its "e-Platform," a highly reliable and scalable technology architecture that augments the power of BellSouth's world-class network for companies that want to do e-business over the Internet. BellSouth's new e-Business Centers in Atlanta and Miami build on the power of our existing fiber-based network to deliver the speed, reliability and security required for today's mission critical e-business applications. 

BellSouth's e-Business Centers provide a variety of Web hosting services. Businesses still get reduced latency, better performance, continuous availability, improved caching, greater bandwidth and speed, and closer proximity to their customers and employees. BellSouth is using solutions from Qwest Communications International and Sun Microsystems to strengthen the e-Platform and take advantage of the exploding business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplaces, valued at some $2.7 trillion nationally by the year 2004. Over the same period, the market opportunity represented by Internet-enabled initiatives in the Southeast is valued at $4-6 billion. 

BellSouth is defining new standards of performance and reliability associated with the Internet. BellSouth's e-Platform provides unique "bunker-like" security and reliability against potential natural and man-made disasters, utilizing "battle-tested" facilities that have weathered Hurricanes Hugo, Andrew and Floyd.

It stands for Florida Multimedia Internet eXchange … it's the most advanced Internet exchange, or Network Access Point (NAP) in the country … and BellSouth is building it in South Florida. BellSouth's FloridaMIX uses the latest optical switching technologies and fiber networks to bring unprecedented bandwidth, speed and performance to Internet service providers, Web hosting firms and other Internet-related businesses. The first-of-its-kind FloridaMIX is only the seventh NAP in the U.S.