th AT&T's One-Rate Plan and Sprint.Wireless Phone Industry: Competition Heats Up. The wireless industry is virtually an oligopoly. The wireless phone business is primarily dominated by three major firms which consist of AT& T Wireless, Sprint PCs Group, and Nextel. The field recently expanded with the addition of Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless. Verizon Wireless is an alliance of Bell Atlantic and Vodafone Air Touch plc. Verizon Wireless (created in April 2000) is now the largest wireless provider with 16 million voce/data customers and 4 million paging customers. Cingular Wireless is a national wireless joint venture launched in October 2000 with revenues of $12 billion. Cingular serves 19 million customers and 190 potential customers across 38 states. Cingular Wireless serves 42 of the nation's top 50 markets but is less comprehensive coverage than AT&T and Verizon Wireless. In May 2000, AT&T sold 360 million shares in AT&T Wireless at an initial IPO price of $29.50 which raised $10.62 billion. These funds will likely be used for expanding their cellular phone network and building infrastructure into data retrieval services.Cellular Pricing Competition Heats Up. The business is heavily concentrating its efforts on offering consumers service at a variety of price points. AT&T launched One Rate Plan in mid-1998.Market penetration and affordability will lower prices and thus, attract more users. Per minute voice calls continue to fall. Speed to market is becoming increasingly important as is brand name. Companies must pool resources together to build national networks. It would be to time and cost ineffective to build their own national networks. Consumers are increasingly demanding more new features with their cellular phone service. Many consumers now request data retrieval functionality. Some cellular phone companies have responded by increasing their capital spending budgets on data-based infrastructure equi...
