The "Cellular One" brand was created and initially owned by the Washington Baltimore Cellular Telephone Company, which was the first fully-licensed and operational cellular system in the US. One of its partners, American Radio Telephone Service, had operated the "developmental" system in the Washington-Baltimore markets and contributed its existing network to the partnership. One of the other major partners was a subsidiary of the Washington Post.
The Cellular One brand was developed in the early years of cellular, probably the mid-1980s, as a way for the A block cellular licensees to establish a common identity, which was believed to be critical for roaming; the B block carriers, at the outset were all affilated with the local telephone company, and the A block carriers wanted ti be able to have a counter to the the "One Bell System" identity that persisted in the minds of the public even though Ma Bell had been broken up.
WBCTC sold its service exclusively under the Cellular One name, as did many other A carriers that licensed the name. By the early 1990s, SBC (to use its current name) bought out the Washington Post, and then ARTS, and eventually all of the other partners in WBCTC, but it continued to use the Cellular One name in the Washington-Baltimore markets and in other markets where it had bought an A block license. SBC thus became the sole owner of the trade name used by A block cellular carriers that competed with the B block systems associated with local telephone companies, including the in-region systems of the Bell operating companies such as SBC.
Meanwhile, McCaw was buying up one after another A block license across the country, eventually reaching the point where McCaw's A block licenses covered more ground than anyone else's -- including in SBC's own telco states, where it operated the competing B block licenses.
Given the relatively primitive intelligence in the analog phones available at the time, this meant that SBC's A block Cellular One customers, when roaming in SBC's own home territory, used Cellular One service provided by McCaw instead of SBC's B block service. In other words, the customers had a relationship with Cellular One -- the anti-Bell cellco -- instead of with SBC, which was a Bell company and the owner of the Cellular One name.
This was not good from a SBC marketing viewpoint -- especially since the Cellular One name was being used more by SBC's competitor than by SBC itself, which was seen as by the consumer as the competitor to Cellular One. Moreover, it raised antitrust questions as well, since any restrictions SBC placed on the use of the Cellular One name could ultimately benefit its own competing B bloc systems.
During this time, the early 1990s, digital service was being introduced by some carriers, and the FCC was setting the rules for the PCS auctions that started in 1995. And, AT&T bought McCaw, beating out a competing bid from BellSouth. Initially, the AT&T/McCaw networks continued to use the Cellular One name. This meant that AT&T was using SBC's trademark to compete with SBC in its own territory.
AT&T was the true anti-Bell, and it was loath to use a trademark owned by the competitor it wanted to beat. The imminent introduction of PCS gave AT&T the opportunity it needed to jump the Cellular One ship. In the mid-1990s, AT&T Wireless started doing business under its own new name and very quickly phased out its use of Cellular One, using its introduction of TDMA digital service as the opportunity to call its service AT&T Wireless Digital PCS, even though it wasn't in the PCS band.
The result of AT&T's defection from the Cellular One brand was that Cellular One was no longer a near-universal A block logo. SBC owned the brand name used by its own A Band licensees and a bunch of lesser-ranked carriers not in the big markets where AT&T held the A block licenses.
Next, the FCC licensed PCS operators. The Cellular One brand was irrelevant to these. PCS service was offered either under a brand name of the company holding the licenses or its partner, or else it was offered under another company's name pursuant to a brand affiliation arrangement.
SBC, AT&T, and the other major carriers now pursued promotion of their own brands in PCS. Cellular markets where they still used the Cellular One name were an anomaly for the majors. Carriers were striving for the elusive "national footprint." And SBC was still stuck with Cellular One in some markets, especially those where SBC was not a known brand name.
Evenually, SBC and BellSouth decicded to merge their wireless mobile operations in a single company, ultimately known as Cingular, and to use a unified brand name. During the process of the merger (I don't know whether it was shortly before, at the same time as, or shortly after the merger) SBC sold its rights to the Cellular One name.
Given the defection of AT&T Wireless from the brand and the consolidation that had taken place in the wireless industry, the brand was principally being used in smaller markets and rural areas. Western Wireless -- a largely rural carrier covering mostly western states -- was one of the principal users of the name and bought the rights. (Ironically, the controlling stockholder and CEO of Western Wireless was John Stanton, who had been responsible for SBC competitor McCaw's early successes.)
Finally, Western wireless was acquired by Alltel in early 2005, giving Alltel -- then a telephone company -- the rights to the nonwireline name. Later, Alltel spun off its wireline assets and became a pure wireless operator.
Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (To reply, change example.invalid to com in the address.)
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Attorney Sullivan for this precise and mostly accurate history of the 'Cellular One' brand name. The only thing I question is when were 'middle eighties' regards cellular phone service? I know that Ameritech was one of the _early_ cellular companies in Chicago (which was itself about the first market place for cellular if I recall correctly) and at the time Ameritech first went into business, 'Cellular One' was there also.Its strange how at my old age I remember the most insignificant things: the first instance of an overlapping prefix (219-659 was/is Whiting, Indiana; 312-659 was vacant, not in use at all as used to be the custom; it used to be in the very old days, Bell did not assign the 'same' prefix in immediatly adjacent area codes, across state line boundaries such as Chicago, and northwest Indiana; therefore prefixes such as 659 Whiting, 931-932-933 and 844 Hammond, 397-398 East Chicago, IN, were 'protected' to enable seven digit dialing across the metro area regardless of state boundary lines, etc, so those in particular were NEVER assigned in Chicago itself until that rule was abolished and strict a/c + seven digits became a forced requirement).
Anyway, about the time that Ameritech started cellular, all of a sudden there was 312-659 in one of the northwest suburbs;
312-659-0000 was the office number for Cellular One out of Rolling Meadows (?), Illinois. So to get more specific I think 'early eighties' in this context probably was 1981-82.