Thanks to the Occupy protests, we’re reminded more than ever of the epidemic of corporate greed, of companies more focused on their current stock prices than on offering quality goods or services, of the trend to outsource jobs while making excuses of being unable to find qualified workers in the U.S.A. Clearly, these stereotypes don’t apply equally to all of America’s corporations, but AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, sure isn’t making a good case for the telecommunications giant in recent weeks.
Most recently, Stephenson spoke at the Miliken Institute’s Global Conference 2012, where he blamed the slow pace of Android based phone software updates on Google. When the audience began questioning him, he continued on, saying “Google kind of determines what platform gets the newest releases and when. Often times that’s a negotiated arrangement, and so that’s something we work at hard. We know that it’s important to our customers.” The problem is, Google doesn’t have any such agreements in place. All of their Android updates are released as open source, as soon as the first handset running a given version is released to the public. Stephenson’s statements indicate he’d rather point fingers than take responsibility for his own company’s failure to provide customers with timely updates for their handsets.
But wait, there’s more. At the same conference, Stephenson also said “You lie awake at night worrying about what is that which will disrupt your business model. Apple iMessage is a classic example. If you’re using iMessage, you’re not using one of our messaging services, right? That’s disruptive to our messaging revenue stream.” Despite paying a premium monthly price for a data package on a smartphone (which presumably also has a text messaging plan with it), AT&T ‘s leader loses sleep over the fact that Apple now offers a program that allows transmitting messages that don’t go through the SMS network. Was he ever told that some people might even email each other instead of using text messages?
Oh, and speaking of data plans? Stephenson commented on those too when he claimed his only regret was introducing unlimited data packages with AT&T’s first smartphone offerings. “Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital,” he reminded the audience.
Perhaps then, it comes as little surprise that back in 2008, University of Texas student, Alex Elizardo, wrote an account of his encounter with Stephenson, where the then-student said, “He’s always looking at the time and multi-tasks a lot. He’ll check the stock price, go to a meeting, check with his secretary, check the stock price again, and go to another meeting.” (Lucky for him, stock quote updates don’t require a lot of cellular bandwidth.)
To AT&T’s credit, the company donates $350 million to project Aspire, a program providing grants to schools, non-profit organizations, and researchers for ventures aimed at increasing the country’s high school graduation rate. Stephenson claims he’s funding Aspire because AT&T doesn’t have the option of outsourcing most of the labor required to dig trenches, run fiber optic cable, put up cellular towers, or install set-top boxes in homes. The CEO wants to ensure a pool of educated talent to choose from when AT&T hires in the future. Unfortunately, even this investment is tempered with the reality that AT&T cut over 10,000 employees from their rosters last year.
In my opinion, AT&T needs to stop the “penny-wise, pound foolish” behavior, fretting over which new smartphone applications might reduce usage of their other paid services or counting every single megabyte of data a customer uses. Just as technology evolved to the point where landline users expected unlimited long distance calls for a flat monthly rate, we’re headed for the same expectations for data usage. The public expects companies like AT&T to find ways to make that happen — not to focus on creative billing to maximize monthly charges. Considering AT&T is a company built off the back of a government sanctioned Bell Telephone monopoly, it’s easy to argue that the company now has obligations to the American public that go beyond most private businesses.
Comments are closed.