Randall Stephenson
“In the year 2020, we will have a nationwide footprint of 5G in the United States,” AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said Wednesday at the 154th annual meeting of the Little Rock Regional Chamber.
He was interviewed on stage by Scott Ford, co-founder and CEO of Westrock Group, at the Statehouse Convention Center.
Asked how this would be different than previous generational shifts, Stephenson said, “What happens with 5G is it’s faster. That’s what everybody goes to immediately: ‘Is this faster?’ Yes, it’s faster, but it’s more than just that. … I would say no latency, but that’s not accurate. But it’s very low latency. We’re talking about 10-millisecond latency.”
For example, when you tap an app on your phone, it will take 10 milliseconds to open.
Stephenson said 5G will bring “instantaneous connectivity” and enable millions, rather than hundreds of thousands of devices to connect to phone towers. It’ll also offer better security options.
But the near no-latency aspect was what he emphasized.
“When you have this kind of speed, and no latency, you begin to think differently about the entire architecture of what kind of services you’ve designed,” he said.
Gesturing to his smartphone, Stephenson continued, “So this device is kind of large; it can be a little bulky. Why? A lot of computing power, a lot of processing power, a lot of storage power inside this device. Once you have a network this sophisticated and advanced, all that computing, all that storage, moves out of here and back into the network.”
On the length of time for the rollout, he said, “These things, they always take longer than people expect, and, when we have them, they always go bigger than people expected.”
Stephenson pointed out that professionals used to say mobile phones didn’t have the capacity for internet, or voice, or streaming video but they were wrong. And now, he said, they’ll be wrong again about their capacity to make internet access totally mobile.
Though fiber will still be the backbone, people won’t need it coming into their home because 5G will give them the speed they need.
And that factor into where the media industry is heading. Stephenson said the future is bringing content directly to consumers, not through cable or satellite television providers, like Disney has done with Disney+.
AT&T has taken over much of the supply chain, too, because it makes sense to have the same company providing entertainment products, internet access and more, he said.
Stephenson also explained how the 5G footprint was built.
He said, after the communication issues 9/11 first responders had, Congress passed a bill that required a nationwide wireless network for first responders be built.
AT&T won the $40 billion bid to build, deploy, operate and maintain that network, which is 75% complete, Stephenson said.
“Why is this important? Because, to put this first responder network together, what have you got to do? We had to go climb every cell tower in America,” he said. While AT&T employees were on those cell towers, they installed the 5G equipment.
Sign up for Daily E-news
