Dobson Cellular Systems, Inc. now part of

AT&T Mobility AT&T Mobility, LLC, also known as AT&T Wireless and Trade name, marketed as simply AT&T, is an American telecommunications company. Formed in April 2000 as Cingular Wireless LLC, It is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, AT&T Inc. and provide ...

, was a wireless telecommunications provider operating in several regions of the United States, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Dobson Cellular Systems was a wholly owned subsidiary of Dobson Communications Corporation based in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Oklahoma, most populous city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat ...

. It was the provider of

Cellular One Cellular One is the trademarked brand name that licenses services (radio frequencies for telecommunications) 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 ...

-branded services in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Dobson operated under the brand name of

, and provided service on a

D-AMPS Digital AMPS (D-AMPS), most often referred to as TDMA, is a second-generation ( 2G) cellular phone system that was once prevalent throughout the Americas, particularly in the United States and Canada since the first commercial network was deploy ...

and

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

network. The company purchased the rights to the Cellular One name from

Alltel Alltel was a landline, wireless service provider, wireless and general Telephone company, telecommunications services provider, primarily based in the United States. Before its wireless division was acquired by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, Alltel pr ...

in December 2005.

Corporate history

Formed in the 1920s, Dobson Communications originally operated a small wireline telephone network in Oklahoma. Over 70 years, Dobson evolved to become the nation's largest independent rural wireless provider to expand operations into 60 markets, following acquisitions over the last 10 years. On June 29, 2007 AT&T Inc. announced that they had reached an agreement to purchase Dobson Cellular division. The closing price was $2.8B USD or $13 per share. AT&T also agreed to assume the outstanding debt of $2.3B USD. The sale completed on November 15, 2007, with market transition beginning December 9, 2007. The

brand name was sold to Trilogy Partners in February 2008. The Federal government prevented AT&T from taking certain Dobson markets In Texas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky along the Ohio border and the I-75 corridor, due to the potential monopoly this would create in this area. After placing these markets in a trust for one year, the Kentucky markets were sold to Verizon Wireless in November 2008 with market transition to be completed by November 2009, and the others, TX-10 and OK-5, were sold to affiliates of MTPCS, LLC, which concurrently adopted the

brand under a license agreement with Trilogy Partners.

Network

Dobson was, for the most part, a rural provider. It claimed to be the largest provider of cellular services in Alaska as well as in Michigan. It was also the exclusive provider of GSM technology in many of its markets and has a few resellers such as

TracFone TracFone Wireless, Inc. (TFWI) is an American wireless prepaid service provider. It is a mobile virtual network operator offering prepaid and no-contract services on the Verizon network under multiple brands, including: TracFone, Straight Talk ...

and smaller

MVNO A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobil ...

s in particular states. It also provided voice and data roaming capability for many AT&T and T-Mobile customers. Dobson had recently upgraded a majority of its

GPRS 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, global system for mobile communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices wit ...

towers with an

EDGE Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

overlay, providing an even faster data rate for their customers.

References

External links

Dobson Communications Corporation
corporate homepage
AT&T Mobility
homepage {{AT&T AT&T subsidiaries Bell System Defunct mobile phone companies of the United States Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States Defunct companies based in Oklahoma Companies based in Oklahoma City American companies established in 1920 Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Telecommunications companies established in 1920 Technology companies disestablished in 2007 1920 establishments in Oklahoma 2007 disestablishments in Oklahoma