Dobson Cellular Systems, Inc. now part of

AT&T Mobility 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 thi ...

, was a wireless telecommunications provider 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 capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

. 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 (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Dobson operated under the brand name of

, and provided service on a

D-AMPS IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation ( 2G) mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS (D-AMPS), and a further development of the North American 1G mobile system Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS). It was once prevalent throughout the America ...

and

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

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

Alltel Alltel Wireless was a wireless service provider, primarily based in the United States. Before acquisitions by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, it served 34 states and had approximately 13 million subscribers. As a regulatory condition of the acquisition ...

in December 2005.

Corporate history

Formed in the 1920s, Dobson Communications originally operated a small wireline telephone network in Oklahoma. In 70 years, Dobson had evolved to become the nation's largest independent rural wireless provider. Dobson's operations in 60 markets were acquired through several purchases within 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 prepaid, no-contract mobile phone provider. TFWI is a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, and offers products and services under several brands. It operates as a mobile virtual network operator ( ...

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 mobile ...

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) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Insti ...

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 Telecommunications companies established in 1920 Technology companies disestablished in 2007 1920 establishments in Oklahoma 2007 disestablishments in Oklahoma