@CTIA IT: AT&T's de la Vega highlights wireless success, warns of abuse

SAN DIEGO — AT&T Mobility President and CEO Ralph de la Vega took a page, literally, from CTIA during his keynote address at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2009 event, highlighting ten “facts” that he said were proof of the competitive nature of the wireless market that were eerily similar to “facts” provided by the wireless industry trade association in a filing last week with the Federal Communications Commission.
De la Vega had the enviable position of following FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and spent the first minutes of his speech praising the chairman’s comments on wanting to work with the wireless industry on a number of issues near and dear to the industry’s heart. Those issues included the need for more spectrum and reform of current tower siting issues.
De la Vega also touched on an announcement the carrier put out the day before, and commended by Genachowski, on opening up the carrier’s 3G network to Voice over Internet Protocol applications running on Apple Inc.’s iPhone. However, de la Vega also commented that wireless carrier needed to have the ability to manage usage on their network to ensure that data-heavy users would not hog all the bandwidth for others just looking for sport scores.
In support of that management need, de la Vega noted that the most-optomistic 100 megabits per second-plus of network data speeds being promised by LTE technology has no chance of competing with the 25 million Mbps potential of a fiber-based Internet connection and thus the resources needed to power even the most advanced wireless technologies need to be protected.
“Bottom line: wired and wireless networks are different and need to have different public policies to ensure the few cannot crowd out the many,” de la Vega said.
Beyond the self congratulations, de la Vega’s speech was short on new information, or at least it was for anyone that managed to make it through CTIA’s 133-page filing last week on the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry looking at competition in the wireless industry. Buried within the tome, and the basis for de la Vega’s “ten facts,” were figures using the Department of Justice-backed Herfindahl-Hirschman Index that showed the domestic wireless market to be the most competitive of Western nations, despite what has been years of consolidation amongst carriers. The filing, again echoed by de la Vega, also noted that more than 95% of U.S. consumers have access to at least three wireless carriers and that 177 carriers currently operate across the country.
Other “facts” touted by de la Vega included praise that the average cost of wireless service in the U.S. is 5 cents per minute;wireless carriers have invested $120 billion in capital expenditures over the past 5 years, excluding the nearly $35 billion spent during recent spectrum auctions; the U.S.was the world leader in 3G subscribers counting 22% of the world’s subscribers and 40% of the HSPA/CDMA2000 1x EV-DO customers, and adding that AT&T Mobility has twice as many HSPA customers than any other carrier in the world.
Coverage key for smartgrids
While de la Vega was touting the success of the wireless industry, fellow keynoter Chris Baker, SVP and CIO of San Diego Gas & Electric, used his time to note that there was still much to accomplish.
Baker, speaking on the increasingly hot topic of smartgrids, said that while SDG&E was taking a very aggressive approach with the deployment of smartgrids the company was reliant on public networks that were still not able to provide the 100% coverage of its service area and customers.
“We need wireless coverage over 100% of our assets and customers, and current 3G has gaps that need to be filled,” Baker said.
On its path to deploying smartgrids, Baker said SDG&E had recently begun to deploy smartmeters that allowed two-way communication between a metering device and the company, and that it planned to roll out those devices throughout its market by 2011. SDG&E also recently signed a deal with automotive manufacturer Nissan for smart rechargers that would allow public recharging stations to accept special credit cards that would transfer the fees in recharging a vehicle back to an owners regular public service bill.
Baker added that with the help of wireless technologies that he expected there to be more advancements in the power industry over the next 10 years than there were in the past 100 years.