* AT&T will rename Cingular. The new name? AT&T.
Another effect of AT&T’s merger with BellSouth will be the retirement of the name “Cingular.”

Starting Monday, Jan. 15, 2007, the wireless company will be known as AT&T. After paragraphs and paragraphs extolling the virtues of the AT&T brand and explaining the particulars of the branding campaign, AT&T mentioned that 20 percent of the operating expense savings it expects from the merger will come from having to advertise a single company instead of three.

Branding mavens will be thrilled to hear that AT&T won’t immediately retire the use of Cingular orange, and that instead of “raising the bar,” AT&T will be “raising it higher.”

* Verizon opens big in N.J. with FiOS TV
The future of television, as Verizon calls it, has arrived in New Jersey. FiOS TV is now available to consumers in parts of 106 communities in the state. Verizon said the service is newly available to approximately 250,000 households in parts of Bergen, Camden, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset and Union counties. Given more or less free license to roll out FiOS TV by New Jersey’s new streamlined video franchise law, Verizon said it plans to offer FiOS TV in more than 300 communities in the next few years.

* Widevine joins watermarking advocacy group
Widevine Technologies has joined the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), an international group of companies involved incommercializing digital watermarking solutions.

Widevine’s Mensor “watermarks” content at multiple points in a video distribution network. Other members of the alliance offer digital watermarking to protect everything from drivers licenses to pharmaceutical labels.

The group includes Cinea, one of Widevine’s technology partners, and Verimatrix, a security and encryption company that also operates in the pay-TV market.