The nation's biggest cell-phone carrier, Cingular has had a tough time the past few years. They're

like the snake that swallowed the rhino - trying to absorb AT&T Wireless caused some severe

indigestion, including billing problems, dropped calls and annoying customer service issues.

But according to a conference call they had today, things are getting better. They added 1.5 million

customers in the past quarter, and lowered their "churn" -- the number reflecting how many people

leave Cingular -- to 1.7% from 2.2% a year ago. Only 12% of Cingular's network remains to be

integrated, combining the old "orange" and "blue" networks. This is important because integrated sites

have a 40% lower rate of blocked calls and a 20% lower rate of dropped calls than non-integrated

locations. If your bad memories of Cingular are more than a few months old, they'd also like you to know

they've integrated 28% of their network just in the past six months.

Integration also covers Cingular's billing systems; running 80 different billing systems has been a

big headache for both the carrier and its customers. That project is 96% done, Cingular says, with

only 2.1 million GSM customers remaining on old billing computers.

Cingular's making strides to get rid of the old TDMA system, too. A legacy of the 90s, TDMA is

crowding up spectrum that Cingular needs for high-speed wireless, but a lot of big corporate

customers were on TDMA, so Cingular needed to go a bit gently. Only 8% of their subscribers are still

on TDMA, which says they'll hopefully be able to free up some airwaves for better GSM and high-speed

signals.

Speaking of high-speed, Big Orange is way behind Verizon and Sprint in ramping up broadband wireless

networks. Where VZW and Sprint both cover more than a hundred US cities with their EV-DO networks,

Cingular's only barely hit two dozen, and that's with some creativity (like calling Phoenix and

Scottsdale separate cities. They ain't.) On the call, they announced their newest high-speed market --

Tucson, AZ -- and repeated that they'll cover "most major markets" by the end of this year, which

they've been saying for a while. We'll see.

If you want to read more from Cingular's presentation, you can see it on their Web site. Have things been getting better for you on Cingular? Tell us here.