Ralph de la Vega loves the company he works for, even if you don’t. That should go without saying as he’s the president and CEO of AT&T Mobility, the second largest wireless carrier in the U.S.
In an interview with Re/code today at CES, he had a few things to say about the company’s new Sponsored Data plans and AT&T’s beef with T-Mobile. De la Vega says that T-Mobile’s attacks on AT&T don’t mean much. He’s not too concerned. “I’m pretty proud of the fact we have the nation’s fastest and most reliable network,” he said. “They can say whatever they want to say, but they don’t have it.” He talked a lot about the advances that AT&T has made in the quality of their network and how T-Mobile’s network just couldn’t stack up. He compared AT&T’s network size to T-Mobile’s and mentioned a Root Metrics study that said AT&T was tops in 90 out of 125 U.S. cities. T-Mobile was the best in only 2 of those cities. He also touted AT&T’s J.D. Power customer service rankings, stating that they have won awards for customer service and for the wireless purchase satisfaction.
Another area of discussion was the rumored T-Mobile move of offering customers money to help offset early termination fees if they switched carriers. AT&T got the jump on T-Mobile with an announcement that last week that they would give customers who switched up to $450 in credits, but only if they were switching from T-Mobile. Competition between the two companies is heating up. “We thought it would be a good idea to give T-Mobile customers an incentive to try it out and compare,” de la Vega said.He said he thinks that T-Mobile’s plan to offer customers credits for switching is a “desperate move” which is funny because his company did that exact same thing.
He made note of the changes that AT&T has made to cut costs and improve service for his customers. He also talked about how AT&T has been investing for the future while T-Mobile has been busy saving customers money. We’re not sure which way he wants it, buy de la Vega can’t seem to make up his mind. Is AT&T cutting costs for customers or not? We think not.
You can read the entire interview over on Re/code. It’s a laugh, to say the least.