Cingular also posted higher than anticipated results during these slower economic times. The BellSouth/SBC joint venture actually beat out Sprint PCS as the leader in subscriber additions, with 858,000 in the first quarter. Sprint PCS, which added 847,000 customers in the same period, had held that distinction for the last 10 quarters.

"Branding has been very effective," says Carter. "That is helping to keep us up there in front."

Cingular's "self-expression" messages are on television often, featuring quirky commercials such as a cowboy singing opera or a football team taking ballet lessons. Its ads ran during the Super Bowl, the NCAA March Madness college basketball tournament and the Survivor television series.

Cingular has added features such as a Spanish portal, experimented with different prepaid pricing plans, pursued products attractive to the youth market and is testing campus-type wireless solutions.

And there's no reason to believe Carter and his team will slow down any time soon.

"When you look at our performance year over year, we are growing healthy," says Carter. "We're still in a marketing mode."

Cingular and the entire wireless carrier industry are exceeding Wall Street expectations in terms of subscriber additions, cash flow and average revenue per subscriber.

Predictions are, however, that growth for 2001 will not be as robust as the industry experienced in 1999 and 2000 because of the softening economy.

"We should start to see a small rebound later this year, but we probably won't be back to the levels of economic activity like we saw during the second quarter last year. It will be slower," says Carter.

Like Sprint PCS, Carter says Cingular has seen slower traffic come through its retail stores, but not to the extent that it has adversely affected sales. Strip mall traffic in general was down, he maintains.

The economy's fundamentals are still encouraging to Carter, however. Interest rates are low, inflation is under control and the employment level still is high.

"While we've seen a lot of people lose an enormous amount of paper wealth, we haven't seen huge numbers of people losing income," says Carter.

He's also encouraged that Wall Street is getting back to the basics. Companies in the dotcom era were able to thrive on promises. Now analysts are demanding execution and delivery on those promises, which bodes well for the wireless carrier industry.

"I certainly find that we're getting much more questioning now about fundamentals in the business rather than just going for growth at any cost," says Carter. "That is a reflection of the market as it looks for a certain return."

That may also mean that carriers may begin to purposely slow down growth in favor controlling costs and spurring profitability.

Carter predicts mobile operators will begin to take into account the costs of acquisition and begin subsidizing handsets less.

"We'll see some people being a little more careful about how they are acquiring the customer," says Carter. "Companies will put more emphasis on keeping the customer."

Perhaps one of the biggest ramifications of a slowing economy for the wireless operator community is funding squeezes. Companies like Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless want to tap into the public market to fund their businesses but continue to postpone plans until investor sentiment recovers.

Carter says Cingular has two strong incumbent carrier parents that have thrown plenty of money at the new joint venture, and the carrier already has secured a healthy debt rating and has established lines of credit.

"If there was a recovery and we thought it was a sensible time to go, we could do it relatively quickly. It's more of a technical treasury issue," says Carter.

"We are a cash flow operating company that is different from most wireless companies. We're in good shape to do whatever is right to get the best value for shareholders."