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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

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Speaker 2: Let's just shift our attention to telecoms.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 2: There's the news out of billionaires Avier Neil. He's exploring

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Speaker 2: a bid to buy out other shareholders the Latin American

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Speaker 2: telecom provider Millicom, which will value that carried about four

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Speaker 2: point one billion dollars. Neil's holding company that's at this

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Speaker 2: invested estimate says it is exploring financing options to support

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Speaker 2: an offer price of about twenty four dollars per Minicon

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Speaker 2: common share, though it cannot guarantee and offer will materialize,

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Speaker 2: and there's already the biggest shareholder in the company with

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Speaker 2: the twenty nine per cent stake. We want to dive deeper, though,

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Speaker 2: into this industry group right now. We want to talk

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Speaker 2: about it from the US perspective and globally. One of

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Speaker 2: the biggest telecom providers here is AT and T. And

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Speaker 2: I'm pleased to say that the CEO, John Sankey, joins

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Speaker 2: us now fresh off comments from a company's multi year

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Speaker 2: growth strategy over at the JP Morgan Technology Conference, And

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Speaker 2: I just want to weave in the era that we're

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Speaker 2: sitting in at the moment, the fact that we just

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Speaker 2: hear from Johnson Wang and Ai, and we're talking about

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Speaker 2: open versus clothes. We're talking about infrastructure needs a quip

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Speaker 2: and needs to talk about energy efficiency. And in many

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Speaker 2: ways you're having a very similar conversation over in the

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Speaker 2: world of telecoms at the moment innovation, the needs for

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Speaker 2: open and in particularly Gone and Ericsson fourteen billion dollars

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Speaker 2: spend revamp wireless network focus. You want to have an

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Speaker 2: open platform?

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Speaker 1: Why we do?

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Speaker 3: And we're pretty excited about what I heard before because

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Speaker 3: the more workloads that Jensen produces that you have to

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Speaker 3: go somewhere and we like carrying those around on our networks,

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Speaker 3: whether they're wireless or fixed. So it's an exciting time

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Speaker 3: to be in telecom. And our point of view is

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Speaker 3: if you're going to scale at the level we're talking about,

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Speaker 3: you need to have more cost efficiency and you need

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Speaker 3: to be able to scale more dramatically, and so open

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Speaker 3: separating hardware and software and our infrastructure starts to give

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Speaker 3: us that cost curve and that flexibility, and that's going

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Speaker 3: to be critical to have the agility to move forward

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Speaker 3: in this.

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Speaker 2: Environment agile at a time why wireless demand is plateauing,

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Speaker 2: maybe slowing no, not at all.

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Speaker 3: Wireless demands up thirty percent a year and it's not

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Speaker 3: slowing down. And I think as you start to look

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Speaker 3: at where we are with what's occurring from a usage perspective,

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Speaker 3: you start getting workloads that come out of AI, it's

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Speaker 3: going to continue to fuel that. And really it's one

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Speaker 3: of the key things that this country needs to deal

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Speaker 3: with is if you're going to continue to see usage

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Speaker 3: go up thirty thirty five percent a year, you've got

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Speaker 3: to build bigger highways to take that. And that all

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Speaker 3: comes on the foundation of spectrum, and we need to

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Speaker 3: make sure we got policy right in this country to

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Speaker 3: get more spectrum out there to deal with the rising workloads. So, yeah,

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Speaker 3: a handset demand might be coming down a little bit.

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Speaker 3: We're not seeing quite the growth we saw ten years ago,

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Speaker 3: but the utility of connected devices, how people are using

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Speaker 3: those handsets, and the demand for the traffic that they

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Speaker 3: generate isn't coming down at all.

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Speaker 4: John good Morning is ed in San Francisco. Look, my

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Speaker 4: head is often outside the bounds of our atmosphere and

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Speaker 4: up in space, and I was really interested to see

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Speaker 4: your deal with AST. You know, Starlink is doing a

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Speaker 4: lot with the other carriers. I just wanted in the

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Speaker 4: first sense, if you have a really clear view of

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Speaker 4: what the addressable market is for Constellation direct to sell.

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Speaker 1: I think we have a view of it.

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Speaker 4: ED.

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Speaker 3: I don't know whether or not we're going to all

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Speaker 3: understand exactly how consumers are going to use this, but

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Speaker 3: we've done a lot of work to not only understand

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Speaker 3: who's the segment of the population that truly needs always

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Speaker 3: on connectivity. I mean, that's really what we want to

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Speaker 3: do here. Most people wake up in the morning they say,

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Speaker 3: I can't afford to be off the internet. And some

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Speaker 3: folks have a lifestyle that take them to places where

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Speaker 3: they do, unfortunately get to the bottom of the Grand

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Speaker 3: Canyon on a rafting trip and can't continue to post

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Speaker 3: to their website about what's going on with their family

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Speaker 3: and it's really important to them, or they have an

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Speaker 3: important business call. There's others who do it incidentally. Maybe

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Speaker 3: they're on a road trip and they're out on an

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Speaker 3: interstate somewhere and they drive off the network and they

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Speaker 3: need it for a day. So we know those kind

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Speaker 3: of behaviors in our customer base because we run the

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Speaker 3: networks and we know what our customers are doing. We

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Speaker 3: think there's a good application for this, just like when

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Speaker 3: somebody leaves the United States and needs the roam on

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Speaker 3: a network outside the US to make sure that they're

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Speaker 3: they're connected when they're.

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Speaker 1: In Europe or Asia or wherever they're going.

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Speaker 3: So this is just the next step and simplifying connectivity

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Speaker 3: and ensuring customers be connected wherever they.

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Speaker 4: Go, John YaST and not starling in SpaceX well.

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Speaker 3: As you pointed out at it's a nascent area where

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Speaker 3: the technology is starting to develop. We think AST has

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Speaker 3: done a remarkable job of getting the technology right where

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Speaker 3: it's consumer centric. The customer doesn't have to change any

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Speaker 3: equipment and doesn't have to change anything they're doing with

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Speaker 3: their handset, and they can still avail themselves of the service.

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Speaker 3: That's really important in our view. And so what we

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Speaker 3: have going on in other parts of the industry is

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Speaker 3: we're kind of taking satellites and services that we're fit

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Speaker 3: for fixed wireless connections or fixed satellite connections and now

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Speaker 3: trying to make the mobile and it's a little.

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Speaker 1: More clunky as a result of that.

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Speaker 3: And so I think what we're looking at is cost performance,

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Speaker 3: how do we make it easy for the consumer and

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Speaker 3: I don't think there's going to be one winner. I

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Speaker 3: think there's going to be multiple opportunities going forward or providers,

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Speaker 3: and we think that's good for us, especially when we

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Speaker 3: have partnerships that ultimately we can have the right kind

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Speaker 3: of relationships to satisfy the needs of our customers.

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Speaker 2: Satisfying the needs of a customer, you articulated very well

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Speaker 2: why we as customers are going to need yet more

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Speaker 2: and more data, more and more wareless. But the actual

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Speaker 2: business is selling wyness has kind of been slowing for

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Speaker 2: you and competitors. How do you stand apart, how do

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Speaker 2: you make sure people reach the AT and T versus

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Speaker 2: Verizon T Mobile when you have had some hits perhaps

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Speaker 2: too worries about data security for example.

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Speaker 3: First of all, you know, despite the fact that customer

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Speaker 3: net ads are slowing, utility and use is continuing to grow.

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Speaker 1: And so we had a very good year.

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Speaker 3: When you think about what happened from a service revenue

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Speaker 3: growth perspective, we led the industry. We're still seeing healthy growth.

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Speaker 3: It's a bit higher than what the GDP levels are

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Speaker 3: and an infrastructure business like ours, that's kind of what

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Speaker 3: you want to see happen. And so it's not a

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Speaker 3: bad thing, but in terms of what we do going

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Speaker 3: forward on this is It's what I just talked about.

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Speaker 3: Customers want to be connected everywhere. Customers want to make

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Speaker 3: a simple decision of how they get on the internet.

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Speaker 3: They don't wake up in the morning relishing having two

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Speaker 3: or three relationships to be able to use my phone

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Speaker 3: when I'm on the go, or my phone at home

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Speaker 3: or my computer at home. They want to call somebody

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Speaker 3: say just get me on the internet. And I think

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Speaker 3: our position at AT and T is about doing that

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Speaker 3: better than anybody else. And our focus is on making

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Speaker 3: sure we take our great fiber assets, we take our

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Speaker 3: wireless business, bring it together, start to do things like

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Speaker 3: add value to a customer to ensure that their privacy

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Speaker 3: is protected, their traffic is secure. They only have to

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Speaker 3: call one place to get it done at a great value.

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Speaker 3: They can use it in the Grand Canyon, they can

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Speaker 3: use it at home. That's the race were on right now,

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Speaker 3: and that's what we're focused on doing tod AT and T.

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Speaker 2: John, thank you. I wish we had more time. Thank

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Speaker 2: you so much for talking us through the focus and

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Speaker 2: of course some of those commitments to the financial goals

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Speaker 2: that were reinstated yesterday and restated and at the JP

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Speaker 2: Morgan event we thank him so much. John Thanky of

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Speaker 2: eighty