Company type | Public |
---|---|
NYSE: TPC | |
Industry | Wireless Services |
Founded | 1999 |
Defunct | 2008 |
Fate | Acquired |
Successor | T-Mobile USA |
Headquarters | Berwyn, Pennsylvania, United States |
Key people | Michael E. Kalogris (chairman & CEO) Eric Haskell (EVP & CFO) |
Products | GSM, GPRS, Text messaging, Picture messaging |
SunCom Wireless Holdings, Inc. was a wireless carrier that operated in the Southeastern United States from 1999 to 2008, and in parts of the Caribbean starting in 2004.
As of the third quarter of 2007, SunCom was providing digital wireless communications services to approximately 1.1 million customers and employed more than 1,900 people. In February 2008, SunCom was acquired by T-Mobile USA, Inc., a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG. The company traded on the NYSE under the TPC ticker symbol. [1]
In September 2008, the SunCom brand was phased out and rebranded under the T-Mobile name.
Founded in January 1999 as Triton PCS Holdings by Mark Balfour, SunCom has gone through many deals with other cellular carriers. The SunCom brand was actually used by three separate companies in the beginning, Triton, TeleCorp and Tritel, all working in cooperation with one another and in partnership with AT&T Wireless. Tritel was purchased by TeleCorp in 2001, with AT&T Wireless finalizing its purchase of TeleCorp in 2003. By 1995, Suncom was developed and had a significant share of the wireless market. In December 2004, SunCom acquired 29,139 customers from Cingular Wireless as part of a deal of exchanging towers. In March 2005, SunCom sold 169 cell towers in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Puerto Rico to Global Signal Acquisitions. SunCom formed an agreement with Global Signal Acquisitions in June 2005 to lease tower space that they subsequently sold. In October 2005, SunCom agreed to sell the 29,139 customers from the deal in 2004 back to Cingular.
On September 17, 2007, T-Mobile USA Inc. announced it would acquire SunCom for approximately $1.6 billion in cash and $800 million in assumed debt. The deal closed on February 22, 2008.
SunCom's operations provided service across North Carolina, South Carolina, northern Georgia, parts of eastern Tennessee, central Arkansas and southwest Virginia, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Beginning in 2001, SunCom merged with AT&T Wireless that served states in the Great Lakes area including Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. This was short lived and lasted only a year.
As of 2007, SunCom Wireless provided wireless service utilizing the GSM standard and operating in the 1900MHz PCS frequency-band, except for one 800MHz license in CMA 629 (Myrtle Beach, SC). Originally, SunCom utilized TDMA as its technology platform when it constructed its wireless network in 1999 and began offering service. In 2003, the company began overlaying GSM, along with its associated GPRS technology, completing the upgrade by June 2004 and enabling access across SunCom's footprint. At the time, this was a significant upgrade from TDMA as GSM/GPRS offered more advanced wireless capabilities including data and video transmission.
Suncom Wireless operated in two separate and distinct regional areas: one in the Southeast U.S. and one in the Caribbean.
The company's Southeast operations provided service across North and South Carolina, eastern Georgia, northeastern Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia. SunCom owned wireless licenses in the "28 Basic Trading Areas" as defined by the FCC which covered SunCom Wireless's southeast region. These licenses included the major metropolitan areas of Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh-Durham-Cary, and Charleston and in aggregate encompass a population of over 14 million people.
SunCom Wireless completed the migration of its remaining TDMA Customer Base to GSM on September 30, 2006. In the final days of its operation, SunCom Wireless only operated on the GSM platform.
In the Caribbean, SunCom operated in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The company owned 3 wireless licenses covering this territory, which had a population of more than 4 million people.
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices with GPRS started to roll out around the year 2001. At the time of introduction it offered for the first time seamless mobile data transmission using packet data for an "always-on" connection, providing improved Internet access for web, email, WAP services, and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).
T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic, Poland and the United States.
AT&T Mobility, LLC, also known as AT&T Wireless and marketed as simply AT&T, is an American telecommunications company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T Inc. and provides wireless services in the United States. AT&T Mobility is the third largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 116 million subscribers as of September 30, 2024.
AT&T Wireless Services, Inc., formerly part of AT&T Corporation, was a wireless telephone carrier founded in 1987 in the United States, based in Redmond, Washington, and later traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol "AWE", as a separate entity from its former parent.
Rogers Wireless Inc. is a Canadian mobile network operator headquartered in Toronto, providing service nationally throughout Canada. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The company had revenues of just under $15.1 billion in 2018. Rogers Wireless is the largest wireless carrier in Canada, with 13.7 million subscribers as of Q2 2023.
Western Wireless Corporation was a cellular network operator that provided mobile telecommunications service to subscribers in 19 western states in the United States, and seven other countries. Western Wireless marketed analog cellular service under the CELLULAR ONE brand in 88 FCC-defined rural service areas and digital PCS service under the VoiceStream brand in 19 FCC-defined metropolitan service areas. At its peak in 2004, Western Wireless provided service to 1.4 million domestic subscribers. Western Wireless obtained additional revenue from the international operations of its Western Wireless International Corporation subsidiary, which was licensed to provide wireless communications services in seven countries to a total of 1.8 million subscribers.
Houston Cellular was a Houston-based cell phone company which provided AMPS and D-AMPS (TDMA) service in the Greater Houston area. It was formed in 1983 and was operated as a partnership between LIN Broadcasting Corp., Mobile Communication Corp. of America and BellSouth Co. Its headquarters were located in Houston, Texas.
Cellular One is the trademarked brand name that licenses services used by several cellular service providers in the United States. The brand was sold to Trilogy Partners by AT&T in 2008 shortly after AT&T had completed its acquisition of Dobson Communications. Cellular One was originally the trade name of one of the first mobile telephone service providers.
Alltel was a landline, wireless and general telecommunications services provider, primarily based in the United States. Before its wireless division was acquired by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, Alltel provided cellular service to 34 states and had approximately 13 million subscribers. As a regulatory condition of the acquisition by Verizon, a small portion of Alltel was spun off and continued to operate under the same name in six states, mostly in rural areas. Following the merger, Alltel remained the ninth largest wireless telecommunications company in the United States, with approximately 800,000 customers. On January 22, 2013, AT&T announced they were acquiring what remained of Alltel from Atlantic Tele-Network for $780 million in cash.
GAIT is a wireless standard developed in 1999 that allows cross-operation of mobile telephone technologies. Phones compliant with the GAIT standard can operate on either contemporary GSM networks, or the legacy IS-136 TDMA and AMPS networks found extensively throughout North America.
Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before being acquired by T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The company also offered wireless voice, messaging, and broadband services through its various subsidiaries under the Boost Mobile and Open Mobile brands and wholesale access to its wireless networks to mobile virtual network operators.
The Claro Company, or simply Claro, is a Latin American telecommunications company, part of América Móvil, a Mexican telecom group. Claro serves customers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay. Its Mexican operations are branded as Claro Mexico. The company's name means "bright," "clear," and also "of course," in both Portuguese and Spanish.
América Móvil, S.A.B. de C.V. is a Mexican telecommunications corporation headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico. It is the 7th largest mobile network operator in the world in terms of equity subscribers, as well as one of the largest corporations in the world. América Móvil is a Forbes Global 2000 company. As of 31 December 2023, América Móvil had 310.1 million wireless subscribers, and 73.7 million fixed revenue generating units.
Centennial Communications and its subsidiaries provided wireless and broadband telecommunications services to wireless telephone subscribers in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. On March 13, 2007, Centennial Communications completed the sale of Centennial Dominicana to Trilogy International Partners for approximately $80 million in cash.
Claro Puerto Rico is the largest telecommunications service provider in Puerto Rico. It is headquartered in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, and has operated for almost a century offering voice, data, long distance, broadband, directory publishing and wireless services for the island residents and businesses. It was founded by the Behn brothers, Sosthenes and Hernan in 1914. Originally, Puerto Rico Telephone Company eventually spawned ITT Corporation, which was founded by Sosthenes Behn. The company was a public corporation of the government of Puerto Rico for many years until the majority stakes were acquired by GTE in the mid-1990s. It was a subsidiary of Verizon Communications until it was fully acquired by América Móvil in 2007.
Iowa Wireless Services LLC, doing business as iWireless, was a mobile network operator founded in 1997, not related to Kroger's service. Headquartered in Urbandale, Iowa, iWireless was a partnership between T-Mobile US, Inc. and Iowa Network Services Inc. iWireless owned licenses to operate GSM cellular networks in the PCS-1900 and AWS-1700 radio frequency bands covering Iowa, southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois. iWireless had over 250 full-service company stores and authorized dealers across Iowa, western Illinois, and eastern Nebraska. iWireless was acquired in full by T-Mobile and on October 1, 2018, the service was shut down as customers were encouraged to migrate to T-Mobile plans.
North-Eastern Pennsylvania Telephone Company (NEP) is a telecommunications provider headquartered in Forest City, Pennsylvania. The company operates as a local exchange carrier in rural areas of Lackawanna County, Wayne County and Susquehanna County. Besides landline telephone, NEP offers Broadband Internet, NEP Datavision IPTV and Wireless Phone Services.
Indigo Wireless was a regional wireless telecommunications company in northern Pennsylvania. Based in Wellsboro, Indigo was often the only provider of service in its coverage area and was a local roaming partner for both AT&T and T-Mobile.