>> 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 t

. >> we should just know that ralph de la vega is the incoming chairman of the ctia, which is the wireless>> at at&t, we have taken a policy that we do not want our employees driving an texting. it is best practices like that that we are encouraging all of the ctia companies to take up. we also enforce those policies with our own employees. we want to be able to walk the talk, and that is to say we have got to stop customers of doing that by setting the example. it is not safe for our young people. >> some said the group said people who have lost relative talk about its cognitive impact of talking while driving. is that something you think the industry should come out against as well, and say people should not talk all driving, even on a handsfree device, because of the cognitive destruction? >> that is a little more controversial. i think we have taken the position of letting the customer decide, looking at all the relevant information, being transparent about that, and letting the customer make that decision. when it comes to texting, that is a very clear case that is way too much destru

. >> host: this is c-span communicators program our guest is ralph de la vega who is president and ceo of at&t. paul kirby is our guest reporter. mr. ralph de la vega if he would give us her background. it's a rather interesting background. if you give us your professional and personal background and you've also just offered a book. >> guest: gas, thank you for mentioning that. i just offered a book called obstacles welcome and it chronicles my life from the time i left cuba at the age of ten years old. it was probably the most germanic point in my entire life because my family because of the no opportunity and the persecution they felt was in cuba at the time as a result of the revolution i decided to leave cuba. you can see how difficult it is to leave your data country. they have to feel the situation was to the ballyard material possessions behind and move to another country to get freedom and opportunity that you felt would be lacking in your own. except when we got to the airport to my parents were told that at that point in time only my papers were correct. that only i could lea

." >> this week on "the communicateors," an insider's perspective with ralph de la vega.8:00 p.m. on c-span2. host: we want to welcome the president of the committee congress for a responsible budget. guest: thank you. host: the budget is approaching $it trillion. -- approaching $2 trillion. what does that mean? guest: there is no question we will need to borrow money to get our way out of it. we have less money going into the government and we're spending more as a result of the recession. what it also reflects is that the government right now has no plan to stop borrowing. we keep lifting these debt ceilings to allow the government to borrow more. we probably should be thinking about how to combine that with some way to change plans. that's one of the discussions going on in the house and senate. there are a lot of people worried about the ongoing level of borrowing, and they would like to connect this vote with some kind of mechanism to change course. host: a couple points, china, in particular, which has about a trillion dollars -- we owe china about a trillion dollar