AT&T: Don't Burden Us With New Regulations

In his keynote Wednesday morning at the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2009 show, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega followed the Federal Communications Commission chairman with a stand against more regulation in the wireless industry. The wireless boss started his speech with a 10-point presentation about how and why the US wireless industry is the most competitive in the world. He saved the red meat for his closing statement, however: "Before we begin fixing what isn't broken, we need to be thoughtful about the consequences. We believe the marketplace today is vibrant, and there is no need to burden the mobile Internet with onerous new regulations," de la Vega told the crowd. He also bemoaned the disproportionate wireless bandwidth usage of iPhone users -- just 3 percent of AT&T's smartphone customers (read iPhone users) use 40 percent of all smartphone data, that they consume 13 times the data of "the average smartphone customer," yet represent less than 1 percent of AT&T's total postpaid customer base. Big problem -- but AT&T management should have seen this coming a year ago. Or maybe they did, but getting Wall Street to buy into the idea of aggressive and costly network upgrades is like pulling teeth without anesthetic -- lots of screaming. So in the absence of new spectrum and new, faster 4G networks, what does AT&T intend to do about the growing demand in the near term? Without the proper management of these networks, De la Vega said, regular data users will be "crowded out" by the small number of users (read iPhone users) who use massive amounts of data. But what exactly does De la Vega mean by "proper management"? Does AT&T intend to quietly begin rationing the data usage of bandwidth hogs like the iPhone? Will AT&T begin to quietly "manage" the duration and speed of my 3G connection based on how much data I've used in a given day, or on the type of content or services I'm using the bandwidth to access?