On March 23, the Free State Foundation held its Eighth Annual Telecom Policy Conference at the National Press Club. The conference theme was "The FCC and the Rule of Law."
The Free State Foundation is now releasing the transcript of the Closing Keynote Address by Glenn Lurie, President & CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Operations.
Free State Foundation President RANDOLPH MAY moderated the session.
The transcript should be read in its entirety for an appreciation of all of Mr. Lurie's remarks. Nevertheless, in the meantime, immediately below are selected excerpts of his keynote address that highlight some of his key points.
And if you would like to watch the video of Mr. Lurie's keynote address, it is here.
GLENN LURIE
On the Four Biggest Trends in Mobile Broadband:
We see four really, really important trends that are taking place in the industry and I want to think about today, but also where we're headed. One of those trends is software. And when I say "software," someone's going to go, "What about apps?" Put them together. Think about that as one trend. Mobility, of course, is the business we're in and a really critical element to where we're headed. It's going to be in everything that we do. IOT, the term is "Internet of Things." We've been in this from the beginning. We are a leader in this, but it's absolutely critical. And video. So if you put those together and you think about those - software, mobility, IOT, and video - we see these four things as being a key driver to where our business is going... If you just crunch them all together, you start to see where this industry is going. It's about software. It's about having that flexibility. It's about virtualizing everything into the Cloud. And when you have that kind of speed in our networks, and you have the kind of low latency we have, it becomes real-time and allows you to do those things. It's about everything in your lives being connected. It's about you having the control of how that connectivity works for you.
On IOT:
[W]e saw ahead that really everything in our lives will be connected - everything from your home, your car, your Starbucks, your office, a Smartphone with you in between. And that's what's really changing people's lives. Today we lead the industry in this. We got into it early. We invested early. We're continuing to go there. But really just so you think about the future, we're just scratching the surface. The projections right now are between 25 and 50 billion connected things by 2020. It's not very far off. A trillion dollars of revenue inside of this business and that's where we're heading.
On Video:
Sixty percent of the traffic on our networks today is video already. Many of you may have heard we made a small acquisition in DIRECTV, about $63 billion recently. That's the concept of bringing video together with mobility. Really, that concept is simple. I want my content, my video, anytime, anyplace, anywhere, on any device. And that's what we're going to deliver. That's what consumers are expecting.
On Zero-Rating/Sponsored Data:
"We've been working very closely with a number of players and I think it's a tremendous opportunity for consumers. That's really the focus here, right, is the customer and what it delivers to the customer, but nothing more, really, to give as far as how we're going to do going forward."
On Spectrum/5G:
[W]henever we answer questions about 5G, it's important to know we don't have the standard done yet... [H]opefully we'll see that in 2018. I think the key for us right now is the testing that we're going to be doing in Austin to really understand what that looks like. When you start getting up in 28 gigahertz and that area, you're talking really about utilizing that in millimeter wave, small cell opportunities. And I think it's actually very exciting when you think about what we can do and what we believe 5G will ultimately have and be. The key to 5G for us is obviously the faster speeds and lower latencies and all those wonderful things, but, remember, as I talked about, virtualizing our network today, we are leading the industry in that. That's going to play a big role as we look at how we then engineer that network going into 5G.
And the other play that I think is exciting is around IOT. We need a layer in 5G - it's what we're working on, it's what we believe will be in there - that will allow us to have low power. So now we can put a sensor on a traffic light or on a water main that has 10-year battery life so that the actual model does work and those types of things. You will see us working very closely with every aspect of spectrum to make sure that we can build that into the standard. So it will be a part of what we do and how we utilize it.
A PDF of the full transcript is here.
And please click here to view a video (approximately 20 minutes) of Glenn Lurie's Closing Keynote Address.
