AT&T Fascinated by Europe

AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson made some of his most extensive comments yet about his increasingly publicized interest in turning the U.S. phone giant into a bigger player in Europe.

“I just find Europe fascinating right now,” Stephenson said at a J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. investor conference in Boston. “One just has to ask that if somebody were to invest aggressively in mobile broadband in Europe would the demographic not lead to the same type of result as we have seen in the United States? And I believe fundamentally, yes, it will.” Stephenson was saying that European consumers have similar spending patterns and demands to people in the U.S. But European wireless carriers have struggled to profit as heavily from the smartphone boom as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, in part because many European carriers have not built out advanced, LTE data networks and still rely heavily on fees for voice calls and text messages. “The market is going to evolve in Europe,” Stephenson said. “As fast as it took off here, it will take off in Europe.”