AT&T Wireless CEO: U.S. Must Make More Spectrum Available
By JONATHAN BURNS
June 6, 2000
ATLANTA -- The United States must take a more proactive stance on making spectrum available, AT&T Wireless Group (AWE) Chief Executive John Zeglis said Tuesday.
Speaking here at Telecommunication conference Supercomm 2000, Zeglis said Americans can't afford to fall behind Europe and Asia in new wireless technology.
"We don't want Europe and Asia ahead of us in third-generation wireless as they are now," he said. "I'm calling for a forward-looking approach to (allocating new radio) spectrum."
Zeglis made the comments a few minutes before Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard was scheduled to speak to the crowd.
AT&T Wireless had the richest portfolio of radio spectrum available for wireless communications, Zeglis said, but he added that European countries now have more spectrum available for commercial use.
AT&T Wireless CEO Zeglis said nothing specific about the company's growth prospects. The initial public offering of AT&T Wireless tracking stock was the largest in U.S. history, with the sale of 360 million shares raising $10.6 billion in capital. The wireless carrier has 12 million customers, but is the third-largest such provider after Verizon Wireless, the joint venture of Bell Atlantic Corp. (BEL) and Vodafone Airtouch PLC (VOD), and the soon-to-be-combined wireless operations of BellSouth Corp. (BLS) and SBC Communications Inc. (SBC).
Zeglis did take the opportunity to tout AT&T Wireless' technology, known as TDMA. Perhaps responding to criticism of the technology - most notably in a recent opinion column in the Wall Street Journal in which tech guru George Gilder championed competing CDMA technology - Zeglis said TDMA and its European cousin are used to 80% of the wireless handset users.
In a recent interview with Dow Jones Newswires, CDMA technology leader Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) Chief Executive Irwin Jacobs said linking AT&T's wireless technology closely with the European standard is wrong-headed.
Verizon Wireless uses CDMA and has plans to start deploying a more data-centric version of it in early 2001.
Zeglis, like most attendees here, seemed intoxicated with the possibilities for wireless Internet usage. He said mobile Internet usage would have a more profound impact on lifestyles than current wired Internet usage.
AT&T Wireless recently unveiled a wireless Internet service called PocketNet, an ambitious service that includes e-mail functions and some wireless browsing via mobile handsets at a flat price.
Zeglis did encourage wireless service providers to regulate themselves in terms of customer privacy issues.
- Jonathan Burns; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2020
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