AT&T Says They 'Will Move Heaven and Earth' To Improve Network

AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan says the company 'will move heaven and earth' to meet its customers' growing data needs, according to a Venture Beat report.

At MobileBeat 2010 the site had the opportunity to ask Donovan what issues were holding back network quality. He blamed the flood of new chipsets, phones, and applications which caused the break down of traditional device testing and rollout methods. In addition, he said that AT&T recently faced a shortage of the components needed to improve its network.

“I’ll tell you the things it’s not been,” Donovan said. “It’s not been capital, it’s not been conviction and commitment.” AT&T “will move heaven and earth” to meet its customers’ growing data needs, he said.

Speaking of the future Donovan said, data needs will keep increasing over time. We’re only at the beginning of the growth curve, he said. Donovan broke down mobile data usage into three phases — we’re still in phase one, which is the “traditional data world,” and we will soon enter phase two, which Donovan described as “application readiness,” followed by phase three in 2014. By that point, Donovan predicted, we will see point-to-point video, and the amount of data usage in 2008 will basically round down to zero in comparison, he said.

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