>> this week on "the communicators," an insider perspective on the wireless industry with ralph de la vega of at&t mobility.

>> host: this week on "the communicators" our guest is ralph de la vega who is the president and ceo of at&t's mobile and consumer markets. mr. de la vega joins us from our studio in new york. thank you for being with us, mr. de la vega. in a recent speech, you called for a fact-based dialogue with the fcc when it comes to potential regulation of the wireless industry. why did you emphasize fact-based, and what issues were you referring to specifically? >> guest: well, actually i think chairman genachowski said when he was going to conduct his study it was going to be fact had had based, and i think that's absolutely the way to approach it. so when the chairman and his staff visited with us at ctia in san diego, we kind of put forth what i think are very compelling facts about the state of the wireless industry in this country, and importantly how it

compares to the rest of the world. for example, when you look at the wireless industry today in the u.s., the points that i made it's the most vibrant and most competitive marketplace in the entire country. not only the country, i should say, but the world. we made our point using facts that the u.s. by any measure that you look at whether it's the a concentration index like hhi that's used by the department of justice or just by the number of competitors that we have in this country it's the most competitive market in the world and the least concentrated market in the world. so i wanted to make those points because some people have said and are still say industry is nt competitive enough, but in the u.s. we have four national wireless competitors, but we also have 173 other local, regional or special carriers for a total of 177.

by contrast, the next nearest country has a total of 37. so the u.s. whether you measure it by concentration indexes or by just the sheer number of carriers, it's a very competitive marketplace, and the best evidence that supports those facts are the prices that we charge our customers. when you look at customers in the 26 developed countries of the world, the u.s. has the least cost per minute, that is, we charge customers in the u.s. the least amount per minute of any of the developed countries. but not just the least amount, it's 60% less than the average. and that results in u.s. customers talking three times as much as the average of the developed world. so it highlights that competition is working, that customers are getting a good deal, and customers are getting great choices in the united states. and those are the kind of facts that we shared with the chairman and his staff, and i commend them for coming out and meeting

with us and listening to what the industry has to say and taking that into account as they approach some very important rules for the country and for this industry. >> host: rules such as what? >> guest: well, rules like net neutrality. that's a hot topic for the industry. it's been for a number of years, and the fcc had four primary principles that it was using to address the concerns and the wire line industry. now there are groups that are proposing that that be applied to the wireless industry as well, and we think the wireless industry is a very competitive industry and that in the end the customers ought to make the choice rather than regulation. and so we're pro-open networks, we're pro-net neutrality, but we want to make sure we don't have burdensome regulations on how people use and run the internet. >> host: so, mr. de la vega, if you are pro-net neutrality as you say, would you be opposed to

new rulemaking at the fcc? >> guest: we would be opposed to placing burdensome rules on the wireless industry that is an industry that is competitive, that is vibrant, that is growing at five times the rate of the economy of the country. so i think it would depend on how the rules are applied, but in general we think that the industry is working very well, it's delivering very innovative products, it's doing things that we don't see in other parts of the world. for example, i also mentioned using facts that today when you compare what's happening in the u.s., all of the attention for wireless has turned to smart phones, and we're leading the world in the deployment of smart phones and networks that allow those smart phones to work. so facts like the fact that when you compare the u.s. and the most advanced forms of third generation wireless technology, the u.s. has 40% of the world's

customers in those advanced technologies such as e video and hsba which are the most advanced forms of 3g technology when we only have 7% of the world's customers. so it highlights that the wireless industry today is working well, it's competitive, it's delivering great value, great choices, it's got the latest technology that cus can hearse are enjoying, so before we go and put burdensome regulations, we should be thoughtful and very careful and have lots of discussion about it, and i think the chairman, to his credit, is seeking input from all sources, and i'm sure we'll come out with symptom rulings that -- some rulings that will address those concerns as well. >> host: paul kirby is here joining in the requesting. >> host: thank you. >> guest: hello, paul be. >> host: regarding net neutrality the chairman has stressed the point that the fcc will realize that wireless and wire line networks are

technologically different. so in adopting rules, it will recognize that. so as long as it does, why is it a bad thing that it applies those rules to the wireless effort? >> guest: that's a great point that i first made with the chairman and his staff, and i'm glad he recognizes it. what it says to me is that we should be thoughtful about how we apply them to wireless. it is different, spectrum is limited in wireless, and we should be thoughtful about putting rules in place that encourage people to conserve this very valuable resource which is what spectrum is. and so those kind of details, you know, it's always the devil is in the details, but just the fact that there's that recognition is encouraging on part of the commission. but i think until we see the final rulings, we won't be able to tell whether we have any concerns about them or not. >> host: on another topic that's gotten a lot of attention, and the chairman talked about this in his speech, and that's spectrum allocation. ctia has said that the

government should allocate an additional 800 megahertz of spectrum over the next six years. some have questioned whether you need that much. can you give us a sense why you think you'll need that much spectrum? >> guest: yeah. what we're seeing, paul, is just a data explosion, a data revolution like we have never seen, and by the way, that revolution is start anything this country. i'd say that the u.s. is the epicenter of the next wave, the next revolution in wireless. and what we're seeing is, quite frankly, just customers using data on these wireless devices like we never anticipated. they're using it in record numbers. just at at&t we've seen a 5000% increase in data usage over the last several years, so it's on a dramatic upramp. when you use your phone only for voice, you can only talk for so much during the day. but when you use it for data, you can consume a significant amount of data depending on the applications you're using which

require more spectrum. we see customers using the devices to view streaming video, to look at videos, to play music around the clock, and so those are applications that are consuming significantly more data than we had with prior devices, and i think it's going to require more spectrum to be cleared so that those applications can continue to thrive in our competitive environment. >> host: mr. de la vega, do you agree with chairman genachowski that there's an upcoming spectrum crisis? >> guest: i think, i think there's absolutely the need for more spectrum, and i think we need to do it quickly. and i think the chairman said crisis because it takes a long time to clear spectrum. our history has shown that even in the 700 megahertz spectrum which was just auctioned it took many, many years to clear the spectrum. and so i think there's a sense of urgency simply not just because of the spectrum, but how long it takes to clear the spectrum and put it into action.

so i think i totally agree with the chairman that there needs to be a sense of urgency about doing this and doing it quickly. >> host: to drill down a bit on which spectrum, the fcc right now is talking about, perhaps, reallocating broadcast spectrum. dod and other military spectrums certainly will be looked at either by the fcc or other agencies. can you give us a sense for politically do broadcasters have enough friends in congress to prevent that and how difficult will it be to get dod spectrum? >> guest: i think anytime you try to reallocate spectrum it's very controversial: i think given where we are, it's going to take some leadership on the part of the fcc and the current administration to make the wisest decision. we're going to give them the input, but they have to balance the various constituencies to be able to give us what we think would be b the best and also the quickest path to some additional spectrum. >> host: on another topic that

has gotten a lot of attention, and that's distracted driving. cti says they're neutral on rules banning talking while driving and they favor bans on manual texting. that's a change in position on the talking while driving. i wanted to get, i guess, your input. has that changed, do you think, because the pr was getting so bad for the industry and they realized that they needed to get on the right side of it? >> guest: i've encouraged ctia as incoming chair to take the issue of texting and driving and make it a top priority to go out and be aggressive about communicating the fact that we don't want people texting and driving and to get a campaign that is proactive rather than reactive, and i think you've seen ctia and its member companies take up that flag. i think that we don't want our young people texting and driving, and we're very supportive of any effort, including all education efforts, to make sure people understand

that we don't want our young people doing that. >> host: and we should just note that ralph de la vega is the incoming chairman of the ctia which is the wireless association. go ahead, mr. kirby. >> host: and as far as -- >> guest: yeah, i wanted to add one more point so you understand kind of what our thinking is. at at&t we have taken a policy that we don't want our employees driving and texting, so it is best practices like that that we're encouraging all of the ctia companies to take up certain standards where we don't only talk to our customers, but we also enforce those policies with our own employees. so we want to be able to walk the talk, and that is to say we've got to stop doing that ourselves and our employees and set the example for the rest of the industry to stop a tactic that i think is not safe for our young people especially. >> host: now, but some safety groups and people who have lost relatives talk about the cognitive impact and researchers

of talking while driving. ctia right now is neutral on that. is that something you think the industry should come out against as well even if it's on a hands-free device because of the cognitive distraction? >> guest: yeah. i think that one is a little more controversial. people think that provides a great value, so we've taken the position of letting the customer decide looking at all the relative information, being transparent about that and letting the customer make that decision. when it comes to texting, i think that's a very clear case that we don't want people to do that. >> host: if we could return to net neutrality for just a minute, i just want to ask with regard to the spectrum that at&t recently purchased, what would happen if that spectrum fell under net neutrality proposed rules? >> guest: well, that's a very interesting question and somewhat, you know, complex, but when we bid on the spectrum at

the time of the 700 megahertz auction, there were two classes of spectrum, one that was the open access c block spectrum, and we purposely bid on a section that didn't have those requirements. the fcc set up that block that has the open access requirements as a test to see how the industry would deal with open access requirements. we actually bid a higher price because of the uncertainty about what those requirements would mean. we wanted to make sure we could run our business as we have been accustomed to doing. now, subsequent to that, that auction and even before the spectrum is put into place, there appears to be a change in the rules. i say appear because, you know, we have not seen the final rules. and so i'm being cautious to say it appears to be, but if in fact we have to abide by rules that

we purposely tried to avoid and, in fact, bid a higher price, to me that throws into question, you know, how we can guarantee in future auctions that when we invest money in spectrum, we can be guaranteed that the rules are not going to change after we started to play the game. and so it's a very concerning issue to us. we think that a more reasonable approach may be if the commission in its wisdom decides to go forward with the concept of the c block having the open access requirements and letting that play out in the marketplace and letting the marketplace decide whether that approach is better than the traditional approach. and i think it's, quite frankly, not all that different than some of the stocking horses that are being proposed in the health care area. i think that may be, there may be an alternate model that can accomplish what the commission wants and yet guarantee those people who bid -- and by the way

the bids totaled 19 billion -- so it's not an insignificant amount of money and can be guaranteed that the rules under which the auctions were held are going to be retained in the future. >> host: this is c-span's communicators program. our guest is ralph de la vega who is president and ceo of at&t mobility and consumer markets. paul kirby of telecommunications reports is our guest reporter. mr. de la vega, if you would just take a minute and give us your background. it's a rather interesting background, so if you would just give us our professional and personal background, and you've also just authored a book. >> guest: yes, thank you for mentioning that. i just authored a book called obstacles welcome, and it chronicles my life from the time that i left cuba at the age of 10 years old. it was probably the most dramatic point in my entire life when my family because of, you know, opportunity and the persecution that they felt was in cuba at the time as a result

of the revolution decided to leave cuba. you can imagine how difficult it is to leave your native country. you can imagine how difficult they had to feel the situation was to leave all your material possessions behind and move to another country to get freedom and opportunity that you felt would be lacking in your own except that when we got to the airport, my parents were told that at that point in time only my papers were correct, that only i could leave that day, and the family had to make a choice. we could all stay behind, or they could send me ahead and follow later when the papers were straightened out. my father made a very courageous decision to send me ahead. he called some friends of the family and told them to look after me, that it was going to be like a sleepover. they would be following soon thereafter. and then it would be four years later before i would ever see my parents. so i came to the u.s. at the age of 10 by myself without speaking

the language, without any family here, and those were difficult time thes. i was very, very thankful that a couple took me in, also immigrants here, and raised me as their own child. but ever since then everything in my life was easy relative to that. so i tell people that sometimes the obstacles that you face are opportunities in disguise because in those early days i really thought that what happened to me was somehow a punishment. i couldn't understand why all my friends with with their families that had things that i was used to, and i was in a new country, couldn't speak the language, didn't know the the people i was with, and in the end as it turned out i wouldn't have changed a thing about leaving that day. i realize that, yes, i was in a difficult situation, but, my god, i was in the greatest country in the world with a wonderful set of people who were taking care of me. so my theme in the book is that inside every obstacle there's

opportunity if you look for it and if you seize it, the future is yours. >> host: and mr. de la vega has worked at bell south, he was chief operating officer for a while at singular wireless and has been with at&t since 2007, i believe it is. mr. kirby, next question. >> host: early termination fees are starting to get more attention in washington. verizon wireless recently announced it would raise etfs on advanced devices. is at&t thinking of doing that, and is there a concern that kind of the growing momentum might result in legislation or regulations on etfs? >> guest: yeah, paul, we currently have no plan to raise the fees. i understand that verizon has done so and also understand that there's been a bill introduced. i think that in cases like this i always think that it's best to let the free enterprise system and the marketplace play out

rather than immediately react with regulation. so you're going to find me to be a proponent of letting customers have choices, choices of devices, choices of service plans and even choice of etfs if that's what they would like, but let's let the customers choose rather than burden the industry with additional legislation. >> host: mr. de la vega, how much time do you spend lobbying in washington or working with the congress or the fcc? >> guest: i actually don't spend a lot of time lobbying, but i do respond to their requests for information. i find that the new fcc administration has really impressed me with how they're reaching out to various constituencies, and when they ask for comments or give us an opportunity to tell our story, i don't hesitate to do it. but i don't spend a lot of time there. we have people on the hill and in d.c. that do a lot of that work for us, but whenever i am

asked and they want to talk with me personally, i'm always glad to do it because i think it's an important function of the process that we're in to make sure that the people on the hill hear from our perspective directly. >> host: on another issue, roaming. roaming is a key issue in the industry, it allows the subscribers of one carrier to use basically another network in an area that their carrier doesn't have service in. at&t and verizon are saying the current rules are okay, the smaller national carriers and regional and rural carriers want them modified. can you give us a sense for why you don't think they should be modified? >> guest: well, our point of view on roaming is we're not opposed to roaming, and we would gladly do roaming deals with carriers, but what we don't want to do is incent the carrier to use our network instead of building out their own. so we clearly, it's not an issue of wanting to do it, and i think most carriers -- at least the

ones that i've spoken to -- want to use roaming for their customers when they leave out of region, i suppose, i think if we're not careful and set burdensome regulations or dictate pricings, it could lead to a disincentive for companies to invest on spectrum that they hold. so i think it's a fine balance of making sure that we do have roaming, but that the rates are such that they don't encourage certain companies to not build out, not invest, not improve their networks and just use very low rates to the detriment of others. so if we have a fair and a balanced approach to roaming, i'm very supportive of roaming, and we have many roaming agreements with our partners throughout the country. >> host: mr. de la vega, when we spoke with chairman julius genachowski a few weeks ago on this program, we talked with him about universal service fund. we want to play a little bit of

that interview and get your action reaction to what he said about usf. >> the bad news is the program is struggling given the changes in the marketplace. as the contribution base for the program shrinks, there are other issues that are creating stresses on the program, and there's a wide group, bipartisan, that has sought reform of the universal service fund for quite some time. the last element of the program that needs reform is that, as you said, it's targeted at the kind of communications service that we had when we were growing up, ordinary telephones. still, of course, very important, but we need to reorient the universal service fund to support the next generation of communications services broadband. that's something that's widely recognized as desirable, there are a lot of hard questions in figuring out how we get from here to there. it's something we'll be looking

at as part of our broadband plan. it's going to take a while to devise a way to reform universal service and to implement it, but there's wide spread agreement that we need to reorient the universal service fund to broadband for our communications infrastructure in the 21st century. >> host: mr. de la vega. >> guest: yes. i think that reorienting the fund to broadband is the fundamentally correct thing. i think our focus would be to direct those funds to unserved areas, areas where people don't currently have broadband, and we actually are working with ctia and our partner companies to figure out if there's a way that we can attack those areas not just on a wire line basis, but with creative wireless approaches so we can make sure that every american can have access to broadband one way or the other. >> host: would you see that as an additional tax at all? >> guest: i don't view that as an additional tax, no.

>> host: paul kirby. >> host: on the legislative front, congress has talked about and congress boucher's expected to introduce a national framework bill that would say, that would regulate wireless services at the national level instead of each state. can you give us a sense of how likely the wireless industry supports this, do you think something like that to actually get through, and what role is there for states to actually enforce such legislation? >> guest: yeah, i know that that is, that's been ongoing for a while. i think what we're hearing is that, you know, there's other more pressing issues right now, but that something likely could happen sometime next year. we have been supporting a national framework in order to move some issues to the national level and to get them expedited, but we're fairly flexible in how to deal with the different view points on that. so we, we think it should be a national framework, and i think a national framework will help the industry in general, but when you put legislation

forward, sometimes you really don't know what finally comes out. so we're going to wait and' -- see what the final bill looks like. >> host: and finally, mr. de la vega, we've got about two minutes left. we can't talk to at&t mobile without talking about the iphone. when does your agreement with apple end, and would you like that agreement to continue? >> guest: we, we don't comment on when the agreement ends. we're under nda not to do that, but we're very happy with the agreement. apple is a great company, the iphone is just the best device out there, and we're glad for it to continue as long as possible. so we're very happy with our relationship, and it's bore fruit for both apple and at&t. >> host: verizon and at&t recently dropped lawsuits against each other other advertising. can you tell us why the two companies decided to do that? >> guest: yeah. i think that rather than fight

the issues in the courts, i think we'd rather fight in the court of public opinion. so i think it was a good idea to put the legal weapons down and just talk to our customers, get them the facts and in the end let the customers make the choice. >> host: mr. de la vega, the broadband deployment plan is due in february of next year. a, the ask, the -- at&t is running commercials saying they support be broadband deployment. are you supporting what the government is doing right now to roll out broadband nationwide? >> guest: i tell you, we have seen some of the work, the early work that the task force has done, and it has been excellent. i've seen the presentations, i've looked at them. i think it's very detailed, very well thought out, and we're very encouraged by the early efforts. it may seem like a long time, but february will be right around the corner, and we hope that the final product will be every bit as good as what we've

seen so far, but we're very encouraged by the great work in this area. >> host: has a, at&t been applyg for some of the government grants? >> guest: no, we have not applied for the government money at this time. >> host: paul kirby, final question. >> host: last question, how difficult -- you're chairman of ctia this year, how difficult is it to bridge the various views of members? typically large members, medium size and particularly carriers on issues? sometimes ctia will just stay away from an issue. can you address that since you're chairman this year? >> guest: yeah, absolutely, paul. that is a great question. one of my goals for the incoming year is to reach out to all members of ctia to make sure that we focus on the things that unite us and not the things that divide us. and when you look at all the issues that we have in common for the good of the group and for the good of the industry, we have many more issues that unite us than divide us, so you're going to see me reach out to rural carriers, new carriers and

make sure we act as one ctia moving forward and addressing the issues that are so critical to the country. i've already done so to our members and ask to be more united so we're more effective in operating. >> host: ralph de la vega, thank you for being our guest on "the communicators." paul kirby, telecommunications reports has been our guest reporter. >> you've been watching "the communicators," c-span's weekly look at the issues impacting the telecommunications industry. if you missed any of this discussion with at&t's ralph de la vega on the wireless industry, you can see "the communicators" again tonight and each monday night in its regular prime time slot at 8 eastern. right here on c-span2.