AT&T Mobility CEO Speaks: Outages, Dropped Calls, App Store, Competition, and More!
Engdget Mobile scored an interview with Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility. Our favorite carrier CEO (for recently telling Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Nokia’s CEO, and Euro-haters that “99.5 percent of the industry is trying to copy the iPhone”), shot from the hip on a wide range of issues, including AT&T outages, reports of iPhone reception problems, the success of the App Store, and the competitive landscape now that Google and Palm are (back) in the game.
Perhaps the best news for iPhone users on AT&T? He anticipates future firmware updates will continue to increase reception and reliability:
They’re continuously looking for, and we communicate with Apple and say, you know, if we tweak this it would work better, so they’ve been very good about working with us and making sure that as we look at things to do the drop calls there, they’re going to implement it.
Strangely, no word on dropping data rates or throwing in tethering gratis…
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Tethering will never be free…unless you’re jailbroken.
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
pda net ftw on my iphone i’m using it right now on my macbook to write this and to pay my at&t bill while waiting for my next class
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
free is not in their vocabulary. We’ll be lucky if they don’t raise their data prices with when the next gen iphone comes like they did with the 2nd gen
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
They can’t be dumb enough to raise the price too many great phones are coming out on other carriers. AT&T can’t risk chasing people away to sprint and tmobile.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:10 pm
you’re probably right but I wouldn’t put it past them after all if the data prices went up i wouldn’t l certainly like it but
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I meant…
i wouldn’t like it but I would still pay*
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
my point is…. they’re corporate America they could care less about the consumers all they care about is money and what’s in the best interest of the company and themselves. Free is just pushing it lol .
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
@ana you would stay but many many would jump **** the iphone isn’t the only game in town anymore tmobile offers cheaper plans sprint is much faster a lot of people i know didn’t even buy the 3g iphone because they took away the free 200 text and 20 dollar price. I only have at&t because i can swap my sim card among my 3 phones.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Yeah i’m a sheep so I would stay
omg does that mean I’m a “fan boy/girl” 
. The PRE IMO is the ONLY competition and must admit it looks AMAZING and kicks a non-jailbroken iphones butt I will NEVER go back to SPRINT….trust me their bad reputation is not without warrant and thats why their turnover rate is through the roof and why they’re bleeding customers.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Yeah sprint is ok untill you have to deal with customer service. But they are more reasonable when it comes to pricing in my experience.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:18 am
fall of the big giants, rise of the little ones!!!
February 24th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Ana, you do understand that the first iPhone was EDGE only hence the cheaper data plan on the weaker network. $30 for the 3G data plan is the standard price for unlimited, they didn’t just jack it up for no reason. I highly doubt it would change when the next iPhone comes out, seeing as it will also be 3G.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Sprint has really made great strides and their service and customer service have really been bumped up a notch.
BTW, no one here who owns an iphone has room to talk about ****** reception, cause last time i checked the phone drops calls even with full bars lol.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
I really believe the problem with reception is the iPhone itself. My two nokias are great on the att network and web surfing is much faster with them.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:58 am
@sting7k I had no idea it stopped running on E it seems like its still running on E half the time lol . I don’t know how standard $30 is for 3G i paid $5 with SPRINT for unlimited.
@lawl-When I had SPRINT they always managed to screw up my bill at one point 3 times consecutively when I would call to fix it I would either A. get hung up on( they tend to do that) B. Get rerouted all over their departments for a long time till I finally got to talk to someone with more than half a brain cell. I still deal with them because one of my jobs is to maintain our company fleet and they do seem to be more helpful but I don’t know if its because they changed their ways or because they just want to retain the corporate account.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I am pretty sure it’s Iphone that is dropping the call. as I don’t see it on anyother phone with AT&T. I suspect that the iphone 3G chip is problemmatic or the phone is not giving enough electrical power to the chip. For those of you who uses the iphone can you try to minimize the use of apps and pay attention to battery remaining when drop call happends a lot?
jli
July 4th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
AT&T blames Apple…Apple blames AT&T…We’re the (big) losers. I was with verizon for 14 years. Great coverage in USA and Canada, for me. Had no idea what a dropped call was until I made my 1st iphone call. Don’t mind EVER paying for the best. The day Verizon gets an iphone or that type of phone, it’s good bye AT&T. Also, bought 4 3g phones 35 days before 3gS was released. Out $400 because I’m a schmuck. Hope they get better coverage in the NY Metro area, I hear it’s an up and coming metropolitan market. So Apple is not MS? and AT&T isn’t Chrysler?
July 4th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
By the way…They play this game of “sorry to hear your 4 phones drop calls” and the battery life is horrible…”sorry you’re not happy, can I give you more minutes?” Hate to say it, but I miss Verizon. Pay more and get great service or, get cool computer with a lower end phone and still pay alot.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:22 am
I am a new AT&T customer in Cincinnati with the iPhone 3Gs and I am kicking myself for switching to this terrible network. You can hardly call this thing a cell phone when every call I make or receive is dropped! Let’s see… I’m either paying for data and I’m using EDGE or I’m paying for minutes and I can’t hold a conversation longer than 30 seconds! Is there a lemon-law I can evoke to get out of this contract?