US telecom executives this week provided more details on the recently announced plan to form a joint venture (JV) targeted at pooling some of their spectrum resources that would then be provided to satellite providers to bridge rural wireless coverage gaps.
Those details came during individual interviews at this week’s J.P. Morgan Investor conference, where the CEOs for AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon were all peppered with questions regarding that JV and their broader views on the satellite-based communications space.
AT&T CEO John Stankey provided the most detail on why the JV is being formed.
“I think all three of us kind of stepped back and said, 'Look, there are some things that need to be fixed here.' It doesn't make sense for all of us to be lobbying for different priorities on the handset deck for spectrum capabilities, and if we get bifurcation on that, that's not going to be good for any of us,” Stankey said. “It doesn't make sense that you have IP that you've developed that allows applications to run more effectively in these heterogeneous networks that have to be integrated. We've got a little bit, you've got a little bit, if we kind of get together into the software space and start putting out more standards around that, things can operate more effectively.”
