AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega Should Be Fired
Not just Ralph de la Vega, but the whole layer of management that reports to de la Vega regarding corporate strategy, public relations, product development, and consumer sales should be fired.1 Besides the obvious hint at a future grab-for-cash dropped in recent remarks, de la Vega and other high-level AT&T managers don’t understand that AT&T’s primary business is to sell network services. If they did, why in the name of all that’s true and good would AT&T want to throttle their most active network users? Silly me. I forgot AT&T thinks their business is milking the cash cow.
Potty-mouth Dan Lyons (language NSFW) masquerading as Steve Jobs makes the point humorously and effectively when he writes
So let’s talk traffic. We’ve got people who love this goddamn phone so much that they’re living on it. Yes, that’s crushing your network. Yes, 3% of your users are taking up 40% of your bandwidth. You see this as a bad thing. It’s not. It’s a good thing. It’s a blessing. It’s an indication that people love what we’re [Apple and AT&T] doing, which means you now have a reason to go out and double or triple or quadruple your damn network capacity. Jesus! I can’t believe I’m explaining this to you. You’re in the business of selling bandwidth. That pipe is what you sell. Right now what the market is telling you is that you can sell even more! Lots more! Good Lord. The world is changing, and you’re right in the sweet spot.
