Tag Archive: Ralph

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T’s consumer business, said on Tuesday that the U.S. phone company would directly sell netbooks from Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd starting this summer.

Until now, only AT&T stores in Atlanta and Philadelphia, and consumer electronics retailers RadioShack Corp and Costco, have been selling the netbooks, which come with AT&T mobile data connections.

"We’re taking broadband and really making it mobile," de la Vega said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.

Wireless operator AT&T has announced a deal to acquire a large collection of primarily rural wireless licenses and network assets from Verizon Wireless for $2.35 billion in cash. Verizon came by the assets as part of its acquisition of AllTel; to meet regulatory requirements, Verizon has to divest itself of these particular Alltel properties.

The deal covers some 79 service areas, primarily in rural regions, in some 18 U.S. states. The deal will also include some assets from Verizon Wireless itself, as well as the former Rural Cellular Corp. AT&T will also sell some of its Centennial Communications Corp. assets to Verizon Wireless for $240 million.  Read more...

When Google announced its Android mobile phone platform back in November, mobile carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile were members of the Open Handset Alliance from the outset. Now, U.S. carrier AT&T says it will also offer phones based on Google’s Android architecture, after having been assured by Google that the company won’t be locked into only offering Google applications on the devices.

According to numerous reports, at this week’s CTIA wireless conference in Las Vegas, Google assured AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega that AT&T would be able to customize Android devices with any applications they liked.

While AT&T’s home broadband customers may still be cringing from Monday’s rate hike, the company’s mobile broadband customers are experiencing the other side of the coin: a surprise expansion in service with no additional cost. AT&T announced on Wednesday that it would grow its 3G network by 80 more cities in 2008, and upgrade all of its towers for even faster speeds.

In total, AT&T’s 3G network will span 350 cities when expansion finishes, which will include all of the top 100 markets in the U.S. The network will also employ HSUPA technology, pushing download speeds  between 600 and 1,400 Kbps, and upload speeds between 500 to 800 Kbps. When the transition to HSUPA is complete, AT&T will be the only U.S. carrier to have totally transitioned to HSPA standards.