History
In 1977, the American Radio Telephone Service and Motorola formed Cellular One to offer service to the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., area. In 1984, cellular service began in the Baltimore/DC area.
The Baltimore/DC service, and the rights to the name Cellular One, were sold from Metromedia to Southwestern Bell in 1987. In 1989, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems and McCaw Communications formed a partnership called Cellular One Group. In 1992, Vanguard Cellular Systems joined the group. In 1995, Cellular One opened up membership in the partnership to all A-side providers. Under the U.S. AMPS allocation, A-side providers were independent wireless operators, while B-side providers were usually affiliates of the local landline telephone company. A new slogan was also developed, "Cellular One: Clear Across America", recognizing cellular's national reach, although there were very few national plans at this time. In 1995, Cellular One affiliates had over 5 million customers and affiliates' towers served approximately 69% of the U.S. population. Also in 1995, SNET joined the partnership. Not all A-side carriers participated: most notably, L.A. Cellular, in the nation's second largest market, Los Angeles, never participated in Cellular One, and did not have agreements with Cellular One for some time. AT&T purchased McCaw Cellular in 1994; shortly thereafter, AT&T renamed the former McCaw providers "AT&T Wireless" and dropped out of the partnership. Western Wireless joined the partnership in 1999.
When SBC Communications (which purchased SNET in 1998) and BellSouth merged their wireless operations into Cingular Wireless in 2001, the Cellular One group name became the sole property of Western Wireless. In 2004 Cingular merged with AT&T Wireless, which had acquired Vanguard in 1999, formally reuniting the original Cellular One partnership into a single company.
Read more about this topic: Cellular One
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