at&t執行長蘭德爾•史蒂芬森（randall stephenson）說：“我希望我們能更快地採取行動”，扼殺無限的資料

AT&T執行長蘭德爾·斯蒂芬森（Randall Stephenson）是無線行業最有權勢的人物之一，也是AT&T移動公司Ralph de la Vega的老闆。本週，作為米爾肯研究所2012年全球會議的一部分，他發言了一個多小時，並回答了一些問題。斯蒂芬森的許多評論都是對AT&T在所謂的頻譜危機和行業整合需求（就像去年收購T-Mobile失敗一樣）這兩個問題上慣常的談話要點的重新梳理，但在這一...

關於iPhone對AT&T資料網路的影響，以及AT&T如今在智慧**上提供的從無限資料到分層定價的轉變，Stephenson表示，他並不後悔提供iPhone（他為什麼會這麼做？）但他希望他能比他更早地取消30美元的“你能吃什麼”計劃：

You ask, do you ever look back and ask, do we wish we hadn't [launched the iPhone]? No. No, I never reflect on that. Should we have changed the pricing model sooner? Yes. I wish we had moved quicker to change the pricing model to make sure that people that were c***uming the bandwidth were paying for the bandwidth. And so we had a model where the high-end users were being subsidized by the low-end users. We got that model straight — took a while to get that straight. But no, it has revolutionized our industry, and I don't regret it at all.

他接著表示，在沒有T-Mobile式整合的情況下，行業內“除了價格上漲壓力外，什麼都不會有”：

Make no mistake about it, if you don't find soluti*** like [acquiring T-Mobile USA], there is nothing but upward pricing pressure in this marketplace. And you're experiencing it and you're living through it today. Since the beginning of the year when that deal got killed, our data prices have gone up 30 percent. You want to upgrade to a **artphone? Every carrier in the industry now has put in place an upgrade fee to try to slow this down. Virtually every carrier is now throttling, meaning when you hit a certain threshold of usage in a given month, your speeds get scaled back to try to reduce the utilization of these networks.

然而，他很快就註意到，儘管存在明顯的頻譜危機，但在整個智慧**革命期間，他還是設法提高了公司的利潤率：

2006, before all this began, we were basically a zero data revenue company running at about 30, 32 percent margins. Today, we're a 20 billion dollar data revenue company and we're operating at 41, 42 percent margins. So, I mean, people ask me, do you worry about how much value Apple is extracting out of the equation or the handset makers, I say, no, as long as we're extracting value too. Would I like to have more of the value? Of course! Right? But it's been good for our industry.

儘管T-Mobile的交易肯定已經失敗，但斯蒂芬森堅信，美國無線行業的整合是不可避免的— 不管AT&T是否參與— 聲稱競爭加劇會降低頻譜利用效率：“很明顯，競爭對手越多，頻譜分配的效率就越低。只是。。。這是數學上的，”他說。他還聲稱，在韓國、歐洲和日本等市場，“競爭對手的數量要少得多”，這導致了“更合理的頻譜分配”，但目前尚不清楚斯蒂芬森從何處獲得資訊— 例如，英國有四個主要參與者，而日本和韓國都有三個，幾乎不比今天美國的四個國家“少得多”。

整個對話-下麵嵌入-是一個迷人的聽任何人對未來的無線競爭感興趣。