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AT&T's telecoms chief is retiring amid industry upheaval
As the telecom industry is going through a seismic shift, the head of AT&T Communications is stepping down. John Donovan set his retirement date for October 1st and the company will name a successor soon.
AT&T small cell site pilot due between late 2012, 2013
AT&T has been hinting for a while that it's getting closer to implementing small cell sites in its network, and at CTIA Wireless 2012 gave a stronger clue as to when and how the mini network hubs will operate. Executive technology VP John Donovan clarified to Reuters that a pilot is expected to start late this year and should run into 2013. If all runs smoothly, the below-tower-sized sites will be clipping on to lamp posts and other parts of the urban landscape to strengthen coverage in places where wide-area WiFi alone won't do. While Donovan didn't venture deep into the infrastructure at the trade show, Cisco had previously said that AT&T would be using sites incorporating 2G, 3G, 4G and WiFi when the provider did start experimenting with small cells. If so, there's a chance subscribers could get AT&T WiFi without having to turn to an airport, landmark or coffee shop.
AT&T also looking at Voice over LTE, paints a bullseye on 2013
With great bandwidth comes great responsibility is a lesson not lost on AT&T, as the cellular carrier has revealed it will follow Verizon's lead in improving call quality with Voice over LTE. Following Verizon's impressive demo of the technology this morning, Forbes cornered AT&T CTO John Donovan at MWC, who confessed that AT&T is working on something similar for a tentative 2013 release. That may sound a bit far off, but remember that Verizon won't launch its service until 2012, and AT&T won't hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for LTE until later this year anyhow. In the meanwhile, you're welcome to use your occasionally unlimited data for all the Skype you want.
AT&T: 80 percent of network now upgraded to HSPA+
AT&T promised that it would be expanding its HSPA+ rollout this year, and it's now finally touting some actual results. Speaking at the Sencha Conference in San Francisco this week, AT&T CTO John Donovan confirmed that the carrier has upgraded a full 80 percent of its network to HSPA+, which promises to offer two and half times the performance of regular HSPA. Donovan also talked a bit out mobile data use in general, and revealed that data traffic growth has actually slowed over the past few months from a rate of 50 times to 30 times what it was three years ago. Donvon was quick to point out, however, that "If you look in absolute numbers, it's still a tremendous growth rate," and actually represents a three thousand percent uptick in data traffic over the past three years.
