Caller’s ID

What’s that beeping in the middle of the night? If you’re a Cingular Wireless customer, it might just be your mobile phone company calling.

Every night from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., Cingular has been sending out messages to customers across the country--and it has been driving some of them crazy.

The purpose is simply to update the name label on the phones. The transmissions have been taking place overnight to avoid swamping the wireless network during business hours, according to Becky Vieira, a spokeswoman for Cingular. The company is a mobile phone joint venture that combines 11 wireless brands in 38 states.

In Long Beach, Kelly Bray’s phone started beeping at 5 a.m., waking him up. He grabbed his phone and read a message from Cingular: “Company name change please turn your phone off and on.”

When he complied, the small type on his opening phone screen changed from “PacBell” to “Cingular.”

“It was dumb and annoying,” he said. “Why did they have to do this in the middle of the night? If your cell phone goes off in the middle of the night, you’re going to bolt upright and sprint over to the phone because maybe someone’s died or something.”

The company, which has 20 million customers, started the mass messaging in January and won’t be finished until the end of June.

Customers are not charged for the message. If the target phone is off or out of its home region, the message will arrive when the phone is turned on within the coverage area.

Vieira believes that only a small percentage of Cingular subscribers are being awakened by the messaging. “Most people turn their phone off, unless they like waking up in the middle of the night.”