Best Practices for Monetizing New Telco Applications

Next Generation Communications Blog

Best Practices for Monetizing New Telco Applications

By Mae Kowalke


Like several other major wireless service providers, AT&T is in the gradual process of converting its networks to Long Term Evolution (LTE), the fourth-generation mobile communications standard that promises faster speeds and more advanced capabilities.

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To make LTE migration possible, AT&T has partnered with Alcatel-Lucent. Together, the two companies have an ambitious goal to create, as AT&T Operations CEO John Stankey put it in a recent video, “one of the best wireless networks in the world.”

Since AT&T has been committed to GSM for a long time, the transition to LTE is natural, Stankey said. Moving in this direction means AT&T can ride the benefits of UMTS/HSPA dynamic, improve on 3G speeds, and help lead the way to a graceful transition to LTE.

The Alcatel-Lucent/AT&T LTE partnership makes sense for a number of reasons. From a supply chain perspective, Stankey, pointed out, it involves a strong base of individuals supporting cutting-edge technology. For customers, it provides ability to move more freely around the country and the world without losing connection to seamless, high value next gen communications.

“LTE is critical for us to manage our cost structure over time,” Stankey said in the video. “We believe in order for us to be best for our customers, we have to have low cost and highly capable networks.”

He added that AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent have been working together for a long time and the partnership works for two main reasons. First, people in the two organizations have great working relationships. Second, the partnership involves good technology that can be used to innovate solutions for the North American market.

For AT&T, there’s another imperative to embracing LTE: the ‘green’ angle. As a founding member of the Green Touch consortium, sustainable practices are a cornerstone of AT&T’s corporate philosophy.

“Green matters to AT&T because it’s the right thing to do for the environment and the globe we operate in,” Stankey said. “We have to be concerned about the longevity and sustainability of our ecosystem just like everybody else.”

Green also means saving money. Wireless networks take a lot of energy to operate, so finding ways to operate more efficiently just makes good business sense.

For more discussion about LTE, wireless innovations and the AT&T/Alcatel-Lucent partnership, watch the full video.

 



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