Cingular to charge $5 for older phones

That network capacity is crucial because Cingular is trying to shake a reputation for poor service, boasting in national ad campaigns that its customers suffer the fewest dropped calls. Cingular's image was tarnished after its acquisition in late 2004 of AT&T Wireless Services, a merger that required the complex integration of two disparate networks.

In early July, a federal lawsuit was filed claiming Cingular promised to provide uninterrupted service to AT&T Wireless subscribers, but instead degraded their phone reception in an effort to persuade them to sign new contracts.

Cingular strongly refuted the claims in the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status on behalf of the more than 20 million customers AT&T Wireless had at the time of the merger. Many paid $18 "transfer" fees to switch to Cingular plans and were required to buy new phones or pay other fees, according to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

On Monday, Cingular issued a statement to AP saying that with the number of analog and TDMA users dwindling, "the per-customer cost of using that network is increasing considerably. That's why we made a decision to impose this charge."

The statement stressed that, "Customers can avoid the charge by switching to our GSM network and equipment. The combination of coverage, service quality, devices, and advanced features on GSM is superior to TDMA."

Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, serves most of its 54.8 million subscribers with a different digital wireless technology known as "CDMA," but still has an undisclosed number of analog customers. Those users are not charged an extra fee.

Sprint Nextel Corp. has no analog subscribers on either of its two networks, which were built later than those at Verizon and Cingular and use digital technologies. The Sprint network uses CDMA, while Nextel employs a standard called iDEN.

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