<p>Cingular Wireless, a patchwork of smaller companies, is on the verge of becoming the nations largest mobile phone provider with its planned purchase of AT&T Wireless, but the company must fix service problems if it wants to become an industry leader in its own right.</p><p>Both companies have lost more subscribers than theyve gained under a new federal rule that allows cell phone users to switch carriers without losing their phone number.</p><p>And in its February survey of cell phone users, Consumer Reports said Cingular and AT&T Wireless trailed industry leader Verizon Communications and rival Nextel Communications on service. Cingular and AT&T subscribers suffer from overloaded circuits in several cities, have only average levels of customer satisfaction and have customer turnover rates near 30 percent annually, the magazine found.</p><p>Some worry that those problems could increase if the two cell phone giants go ahead with the $41 billion deal announced Tuesday.</p><p>Company officials and some analysts counter that Cingular, cobbled together from small local wireless carriers, has experience melding distinct networks, call centers and billing systems. Cingular says technology has helped the company centralize operations in past acquisitions and will help again if the AT&T Wireless deal is approved by shareholders and regulators. The company said it has condensed more than 60 call centers into 22 and 11 billing systems into two in recent years.</p><p>These guys have actually done it once. But, now I think the challenge is much bigger, said Nitin Shah, an analyst with telecom research firm RHK of San Francisco.</p><p>Shah said existing customer gripes mean Cingular will have to work harder to make services more uniform, something their competitors have done well. At the same time, he said it could be a good fit.</p><p>The transition is not going to be simple, but the foundations of having a common technology base is there, Shah said.</p><p>Cingular chief executive Stan Sigman acknowledges there have been efficiency and service issues at his company and at AT&T Wireless, but he said he believes those problems will be solved.</p><p>The service will get better and I will commit to that, Sigman said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. There wont be dropping of calls. They will have good voice quality.</p><p>He added, This is all about taking two good companies and making it into one great company.</p><p>Cingular said the acquisition of valuable spectrum and network capacity from Redmond, Wash.-based AT&T Wireless would improve reliability by filling holes in its coverage and the number of calls that can be carried at one time.</p><p>Atlanta-based Cingular was born in 2001 after two local phone companies _ SBC Communications and BellSouth Corp. _ merged their wireless assets. The company quickly grew to 24 million subscribers and recorded more than $15 billion in revenue last year. The deal with AT&T Wireless would nearly double its subscriber base to 46 million.</p><p>The Cingular name is still relatively unknown in large portions of the country, so the company plans to spend a lot more on marketing, Sigman said.</p><p>Some observers want to see the finished product before judging.</p><p>Merging and consolidation for all the rhetoric about better service and lower prices does not at all necessarily lead to that result, said Jim Guest, president of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports.</p><p>___</p><p>Associated Press Writer T.A. Badger in San Antonio contributed to this report.</p>
