ATT chief allays talk of iPhone going away

The iPhone will still be an important part of AT&T's life for "quite some time," company chief Randall Stephenson said today at a Morgan Stanley technology conference today. When prompted about rumors of exclusivity ending, the CEO stopped short of explaining the deal but did say that Apple's phone was both an important part of the company's recent experience and that he didn't expect this to change anytime soon. Stephenson underscored the value of the phone by arguing that it has defined mobile broadband by being easy to use and claimed other devices are "piggybacking" on what the iPhone accomplished.

At the same time, the executive mentioned in equal measure that it was important to have Android devices like the Backflip. He also moved to squelch rumors of abandoning Palm following its newly lowered expectations and said there was "no aversion" to webOS phones, which he still expected would appear.

On the iPad, he reiterated observations that he expects it to be primarily used on Wi-Fi. Most customers aren't likely to want another subscription on their account and are unlikely to activate data more than periodically.

Stephenson was also relatively friendly to the FCC. He fully supported the 100Mbps initiative, although he said the regulator would very likely depend heavily on its plan to divert the Universal Service Fund to broadband to finance the push towards faster speeds.

"It's time we took this on," he said.

Unusually for carrier leaders, he shied away from insisting on control of which apps could run and instead portrayed the current situation as landing in a "rational place" where both sides are finding a degree of common ground. Variable pricing for different levels of service is likely, but Stephenson characterized it more as lowering prices by letting customers "buy by the drink" to pay less for devices like the iPad, which don't need as much data as a full computer.

By Electronista Staff