AT&T CEO Stephenson: Network quality keeping churn low
By Will Park on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 5:32 PM PST In AT&T
It’s got to be hard being the CEO of a company that has recently been getting bashed for its poor quality of service. For AT&T (NYSE: T) CEO Randall Stephenson, he’s putting a slightly different spin on the company’s network woes. At the Brainstorm: Tech conference in Pasadena, Stephenson recently attributed AT&T’s historically low churn rate (the rate of defecting customers versus incoming customers) to the wireless carrier’s network quality.
“There’s no greater cause of churn than network quality,” asserted Stephenson. The implication here is that AT&T’s low churn rate was a result of the carrier’s high-quality network. But, the truth of the matter is that AT&T’s network has seen dropped calls, unreliable 3G coverage and broken iPhone Visual Voicemail problems spurring customer backlash throughout the blogosphere.
Stephenson may be playing up AT&T’s network quality in hopes that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) will renew their iPhone exclusivity deal with AT&T, allowing it to continue beyond the first half of 2010. Perhaps Verizon (NYSE: VZ)’s push to launch LTE in early 2010 is an indication that Apple and Verizon Wireless will have a 4G iPhone ready by mid-2010? Maybe.
[Via: DSLReports]
CORRECTION: Ranall Stephenson is the CEO of AT&T. Ralph de la Vega is the CEO of AT&T Mobility.
people that complain in the blogosphere are much pickIer than the average Joe
I’v heard a lot of rumors floating around that iPhone is swaying from their AT&T loyalty, and it sounds like most people are pretty pleased about it. It’s even become an issue at the Federal level, and they may force an end to the monopoly. http://www.newsy.com/videos/exclusivity_stifling_or_innovative