AT&T Strategy Aims to Disrupt Itself, Part I

At an industry analyst meeting held recently in Dallas (TX), an AT&T strategy of disruption of its own business was a key theme throughout. “We are setting out to disrupt ourselves,” said AT&T vice chairman Ralph de la Vega. That disruptive tone highlights an AT&T strategy of leveraging its vast network assets and global scale to enable and monetize emerging business models.

Some of the more promising lines of business AT&T hopes to disrupt themselves with include Internet of Things, network virtualization, entertainment/over-the-top, and network security among others. This disruption strategy is no trivial task, considering AT&T also has a vast ‘legacy’ culture to contend with, which offers a deep portfolio of legacy products that still generate a lot of revenue and profits. From a C-level executive standpoint though, AT&T does appear to have significant focus and understands that disruption of the traditional telecom and broadband business is already well underway. They aim to steer the technology conglomerate in the right ‘disruptive’ direction. In this Telecompetitor series, I’ll offer insight into this evolving AT&T strategy, gained from this recent AT&T analyst event. Part I focuses on entertainment and OTT.