PrimeCo
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| Defunct | |
| Industry | Cellular Communications |
| Successor | Verizon Wireless |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Headquarters |
Westlake, Texas, United States (earlier) Itasca, Illinois (later) |
| Products | Cellular Telephone Service |
| Website | primeco.com |
PrimeCo Personal Communications, L.P. (later known as Chicago 20 MHz, LLC) was a joint venture of Bell Atlantic, Nynex, US West and AirTouch Communications, and was the first wireless telecommunications provider to turn up CDMA service on the PCS (1900-MHz) band in late 1995. When the company was founded, it had its headquarters in Westlake, Texas. At a later point its headquarters were in Itasca, Illinois.
Hailed as the largest wireless phone service launch in U.S. history, the company successfully launched in 19 major U.S. cities. The company's original cell site equipment suppliers were Motorola and AT&T (now Lucent Technologies), and the original telephone supplier was Qualcomm Personal Electronics, a joint venture between Qualcomm and Sony Electronics. The company served parts of the Midwestern and Southern United States. The two primary service areas included Wisconsin, northern and central Illinois, and northern Indiana; and parts of Virginia and North Carolina, as well as the Gulf Coast from Key West, Florida to Houston, Texas. PrimeCo had the license to operate in Hawaii.
PrimeCo won many marketing awards for innovative advertising campaigns. The first "tease" campaign had scenes like a pizza delivery man "beaming" onto a beach a few seconds after the order is placed. The viewer is left to wonder what the product or service is. The tag line was "Someday, everything will work this well." Overall, the tease campaign featured looks into the future, where technology could create a utopian existence, in part brought on by the advent of inexpensive and easy to use wireless PCS phone service.
The original corporate logo contained a red rounded edge box with an antenna projecting out of the top right corner.
The second campaign, which ran after the company started service, featured a cute (computer animated), bright-pink, little alien named Primetheus, who comes to Earth from planet Primeco, loses his "communicator" (which the Earthlings find and replicate), and then gets into all kinds of comical situations looking for it. The company set a new record for the number of subscribers signing up for service the first year. These campaigns were created by Dallas-based The Richards Group, and conceived by Creative Director Timothy Stapleton and Creative Director Brian Nadurak, now of Click Here.
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Wikipedia