A number of industry analysts gathered in New York City this week to meet with AT&T senior management including CEO Randall Stephenson, CFO John Stevens, CEO Entertainment/Internet John Stankey, CEO Mobility/Business Ralph de la Vega and EVP Technology/Operations John Donovan. Colby Synesael of Cowen and Company noted that Mr. Stephenson explained that AT&T’s path for future growth has been very different from Verizon’s. A lot of the discussion centered about the company’s data plans, leasing of phones and content negotiations. But their network was also discussed. “AT&T’s top network priority is building out its SDN,” Synesael wrote. “Management said it has less to do with innovation and more to do with economics. On a per bit basis AT&T strongly believes using SDN will compound the benefits of Moore’s Law and should lead to very significant operating efficiencies.” Moore’s Law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.
AT&T reiterated that they will be participating in the 2016 incentive auction, but that they have no idea how it’s going to play out. Their level of commitment to the auction will be based on the structure the FCC puts in place. “Management added that while the FCC seems committed to starting the auction in March it would be ‘really impressed’ if this happened and seemed to add that because of the complexity, just because it starts in March the auction itself may last a very long time,” Synesael reported.
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