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Cingular Wireless is Prepared for Hurricane Frances Carrier Executing Emergency Preparedness Plans as Hurricane Frances Approaches Florida Coast BOCA RATON, Fla., Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Hurricane Frances is fast approaching the Florida Coast and Cingular Wireless wants its customers to know it is prepared and ready to respond as needed to keep them in contact with those important to them. "Wireless devices have become a critical communications tool for staying in touch with colleagues and loved ones, especially during emergency situations," Rich Guidotti, vice president and general manager, Cingular Wireless-South Florida. "Cingular has over 20 years of experience in providing wireless communications during severe weather and we are committed to providing our customers with the wireless service they need, when they need it." Cingular's Hurricane Frances Preparations - Refueling back up generators and testing all fixed and portable generators to ensure they are functioning properly. - Deploying teams of engineers and technicians to targeted areas of the state to monitor back up power at cell sites. - Executing network staging areas in Lakeland, Lake Mary, Jacksonville and Margate where additional emergency equipment and personnel can be quickly deployed to the impacted areas of the state. - Transporting over 550 additional generators from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to be deployed from Florida staging areas as needed. - Bringing in additional network technicians from other states to assist as needed and crews of electricians and other specialized personnel on stand by. - Deploying COLTS (self-contained/portable cell sites) and generators at cell sites near state emergency operations centers. Others are on stand-by at staging areas throughout the state. - Florida call centers are automatically linked with centers in other states and calls can be re-routed so customers can contact us when they need to. - Retail locations will be open as long as possible to provide assistance to customers while considering mandatory evacuation orders and employee's personnel safety. - Cingular retail locations throughout the state continue to accept donations for the American Red Cross through the month of September to support hurricane relief. - To ensure that emergency responders have access to wireless communications, Cingular has provided hundreds of phones to emergency agencies throughout the state. Cingular's Network is Prepared - Cingular's Regional Network Operations Center (RNOC) monitors and maintains its wireless network 24 hours a day, seven days a week so they can assess and respond to emergency situation within minutes. - Towers and switching centers are designed and built to withstand hurricane-force winds. - As electrical outages are common during storms, Cingular's switching centers have back-up emergency generators. Cell sites have high- capacity battery back-up and some have emergency generators, ensuring a secure source for power, if needed. - Cingular has Cellular on Wheels or Cellular on Light Trucks (known as "COWs" and "COLTS"), which are self-contained mobile cell sites that can be towed or driven into an area to provide extra call capacity or to restore communications following a disaster. About Cingular Wireless Cingular Wireless, a joint venture between SBC Communications (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth (NYSE:BLS), serves more than 25 million voice and data customers across the United States. A leader in mobile voice and data communications, Cingular is the only U.S. wireless carrier to offer Rollover(SM), the wireless plan that lets customers keep their unused monthly minutes. Cingular is the largest provider of GSM services in the United States, and has a 100 percent digital GSM/GPRS footprint across its service area. It also launched the world's first commercial deployment of wireless services using Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology. Cingular also provides corporate e-mail and other advanced data services through its GPRS, EDGE and Mobitex packet data networks. Details of the company are available at http://www.cingular.com/ . DATASOURCE: Cingular Wireless CONTACT: Media, Dawn Benton of Cingular Wireless, +1-404-236-5305, or cell, +1-404-202-6335, or Web site: http://www.cingular.com/

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