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Tag: Randall Stephenson

  • In a 5G World, You Can Connect Millions of IoT Devices Per Square Mile, Says AT&T CEO

    In a 5G World, You Can Connect Millions of IoT Devices Per Square Mile, Says AT&T CEO

    “You can begin now to conceive of robotic manufacturing that is always on and always connected via 5G networks,” says Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T Inc. “Just to put this into perspective, the Internet of Things, the devices and sensors that are connected all over the place, with today’s networks in a square mile you can connect a thousand, two thousand, or possibly three thousand of those. In a 5G world, you can connect millions of those in a square mile.”

    Randall Stephenson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AT&T Inc. discusses the massive impact that 5G will have in an interview with The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. president David M. Rubenstein:

    What is 5G?

    The G means generation. So 2G is second-generation technology. When you went to your flip phone and you remember how you used to text using a 10 key device. That was 2G and allowed that kind of service. 3G is when the internet became mobile. Third generation networks allowed mobile use of the internet. The first iPhone was on 2G, but when it went 3G is when it exploded because you’re literally using the internet on a mobile device. Fourth-generation is what really enabled all of us to consume CNN video on a smartphone. It literally mobilized video. But for 4G technology, Instagram would not be what it is today. It’s all video. Facebook is virtually all video now. Just consuming all this video on a mobile device is facilitated by 4G.

    5G is going to prove to be the most transformative of all the G’s that we have seen to date. First of all, it’s a step change faster. It also will have zero latency meaning you issue a command and it’s immediate. You’re just always connected. It’s a real-time network. It’s just like turning a light switch on, it’s real-time. This is really important when you start to conceive of services like autonomous cars. You don’t want to be in an autonomous car that’s dependent on a network with latency. It’s very serious. If a kid runs out in front of a car it needs to be a real-time, always on, and always connected network. This is really really important as you begin to conceive of these services.

    In a 5G World, Millions of Connected Devices Per Square Mile

    You can begin now to conceive of robotic manufacturing that is always on and always connected via 5G networks. Just to put this into perspective, the Internet of Things, the devices and sensors that are connected all over the place, today’s networks in a square mile you can connect a thousand, two thousand, or possibly three thousand of those. In a 5G world, you can connect millions of those in a square mile.

    With each of those devices that are connected to the network you can now locate (very precisely) on a 5G network. Today, you can locate (only) within a certain number of meters. With 5G we will be able to isolate that device to within centimeters. Think about what you can do as you begin to get that kind of precision on location and so forth, and that kind of speed. I couldn’t conceive of the iPhone when we built a 3G network. You and I can’t conceive of all the services that are going to materialize with this kind of capability.


  • AT&T CEO Defends 5G Evolution Marketing Following Sprint Lawsuit

    AT&T CEO Defends 5G Evolution Marketing Following Sprint Lawsuit

    AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson defended AT&T’s aggressive 5G E marketing following the filing of a lawsuit by Sprint. During the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, some of their competitors criticized them, saying AT&T is “slapping 5G stickers” on upgraded 4G phones.

    Stephenson says that 5G Evolution (5G E), represents new technology that they are deploying that delivers radical increases in speed and performance on their network.

    Description of 5G Evolution on AT&T website.

    Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO of AT&T, defends their 5G E marketing amid a lawsuit filing by Sprint in an interview with CNBC:

    It’s an Evolutionary Step to 5G

    It’ll play itself out obviously. We feel very comfortable with how we’ve characterized the new service that we’re launching. What we do is go into a market and we turn up a significant block of spectrum, wireless airways that we own. I mean it’s rather dramatic. We’re deploying new technology that I won’t go into the details of it, but when we go into a market and we turn up this technology and we light up this spectrum our customers are seeing radical increases in speed and performance on the network.

    This is a step that’s required to get to ultimate 5G. It’s an evolutionary step to 5G, a critical step. So we are characterizing this 5G E, 5G Evolution. We’ve obviously done our homework. We’ve done a lot of work around how we characterize this. We’re being very clear with our customers that this is an evolutionary step.

    It’s Not a Play Everybody Can Run

    But this is a dramatic step-change improvement in what the customers experience where we turn this up. I fully understand why our competitors might be upset with this. It’s not a play everybody can run. It’s a play that we really like. It’s a play that’s going to differentiate us in the marketplace as we begin to roll this out over the course of this year.


  • AT&T CEO Expects Significant Growth in SVoD as DIRECTV Declines

    AT&T CEO Expects Significant Growth in SVoD as DIRECTV Declines

    AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says that he expects to see significant growth in their SVoD business as their DIRECTV business declines. Stephensen empasized that the declining subscriber numbers for DIRECTV was something they always expected. “The traditional linear we expect to continue to decline,” he said. “We expected that when we bought DIRECTV.”

    Stephensen says that the DIRECTV acquisition was a “typical synergy deal” done to both create cashflow by extracting cost synergies and to leverage their SDoV, advertising, and mobile strategy which would have been “hard to execute” without this deal.

    Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO of AT&T, discusses the expected decline of DIRECTV and the projected massive growth of subscription video on demand (SVoD) in an interview with CNBC:

    Significant Growth in SVoD as DIRECTV Declines

    The results were really right in line with what we had told the street back in November. We had said we expect to see continued declines in the traditional video business and what we are doing is now investing in the new streaming service. Now that you own a large scale media company, the idea is that you can now build an SVoD, a subscription video-on-demand service, that is premium, that is unique, leveraged off the HBO content, and the Warner Brothers content. That is now where the investment is going for streaming television, an SVoD service.

    The traditional linear we expect to continue to decline. We expected that when we bought DIRECTV. We’ve generated a lot of synergies for that acquisition. It was a typical synergy deal. You buy a declining business and you extract a lot of cost synergies. People forget that within 18 months we had generated about a $3.5 billion run rate synergy in this business. It’s still generating $4 billion of cash flow. That $4 billion is now being invested in the new platforms. It’s being invested in fiber deployment and the fiber deployment is going great. In fact, our broadband business in the quarter was up around seven percent.

    We’re investing in an advertising business and since we bought DIRECTV we have stood this advertising business up. It’s a very unique business. It’s a $2 billion a year business now and it grew 26 percent last quarter. We’re investing in that and investing in the SVoD. What you’re seeing is when the investment in the traditional linear goes down you’ll see subscribers continue to go down. As we stand up the SVoD service you’re going to see significant growth over here. That’s where our excitement is. This is where we’re putting all of our focus and our investment.

    Hard to Execute SDoV Strategy Without DIRECTV

    It would have been really hard to execute this strategy had you not done DIRECTV. You needed some basis to get content delivered to mobile. The world of mobile, that’s what we were always trying to accomplish and we’ve been trying to do that for many years. We actually got that done. We got all the rights to begin distributing to mobile within months of closing DIRECTV.

    So now you own a media company and you own some great IP and you stand up a new SVoD service. Now you have built-in distribution for this SVoD, not only through your traditional DIRECTV subscribers but through your mobile subscribers. The two work hand-in-hand over the next two or three years bringing these two together standing this up and distributing.


  • AT&T CEO Gets Blasted on USAToday

    AT&T CEO Gets Blasted on USAToday

    The first newspaper to introduce color into the world of black and white print media is still going strong, effectively transitioning to Internet-based content. This, of course, is not newsworthy. However, because USAToday.com allows comments, every so often, there are social media issues that some companies have to deal with; and when USAToday interviewed AT&T’s CEO, readers let their displeasure with AT&T be known in the comments. This, apparently, didn’t sit well with the publication, and so, the comments were removed.

    USAToday’s message seems to be, “If you don’t like the way you’re being criticized via Internet comments, delete them.” Before that, however, some tidbits from the AT&T interview. Understandably, the focus of USAToday’s interview with Randall Stephenson addressed the potential T-Mobile acquisition.

    As expected, Stephenson’s content was full of corporate-speak, as well as a desire to twist the largely-negative reactions to the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. While that approach is understandable, responses like these are baffling:

    The large majority of Americans, when they go to buy cellphone service, have a choice of at least five providers. In 18 of the top 20 markets, the customer has a choice of five different competitors. It’s a fiercely competitive market today. It will be a fiercely competitive market after this deal is done. We don’t see that changing.

    Meaning the reduction of choice by one is a good thing and will benefit consumers? If Stephenson is referring to AT&T customers who may or may not be able to access an AT&T-powered 4G network, well, good luck with all that.

    While Stephenson indicates the potential merger is to improve AT&T’s infrastructure — something they themselves are incapable or unwilling to do, apparently — it is believed this attempt is merely a grab that increases the company’s customer base. When consumers lack alternatives, the ruling companies understand the power that comes from having choices decreases as well. In turn, less AT&T customers would be inclined to leave the service because of ridiculous Internet connection caps.

    Considering the negativity surrounding AT&T in general, it’s no surprise USAToday readers let loose on Stephenson in article’s comment section. What is surprising, however, is the idea that USAToday would delete comments for being too critical of AT&T. According to a couple of comments, the article originally produced over 100 comments, and apparently, these were reset by USAToday, something the following responses indicate.

    From reader floydcash:

    why do they keep erasing all the comments and starting over? Must be ATT doesn’t like all the angry responses. Corporations looking out for corporations. Got to love our media.

    Reader tiny_toes supports floyd’s position:

    To funny . 100 comments bashing the thought of this merger & all the posts are reset . It looks like Randall Stevenson & AT&T can buy off more than politicians .

    While this writer can’t confirm or deny whether or not there were over 100 comments, it’s easy to see that, of the 32 that remain, the disdain for AT&T and the T-Mobile deal is palpable. If USAToday’s readers are anything to go by, the public is almost unilaterally against AT&T merging with T-Mobile. Unfortunately for the American Telegraph and Telephone company, having the CEO address these concerns didn’t work as planned.

    Of course, it might help if these kinds of people would stop telling us how a reduction of choice is good for the consumer.