At OSP^® magazine, we’ve always believed that the human network is more important to providers than the physical elements in it. When it comes down to it, all the best technology in the world cannot make a company successful. People must do that.

AT&T believes that as well. That’s why Ernie Carey, SVP Construction & Engineering, is charged with blending cultures between the wireline network teams and the wireless network teams.

For years, AT&T operated those two groups separately. That is no longer the case. Ernie explains it best. He says, “We now call it ONE AT&T. That’s our internal code for saying, ‘We’re not going to operate this place anymore as a wireline company and a wireless company, because the customers don’t make that distinction.’”

He is not naïve about the complexity of that challenge. He knows it takes time and finesse to help teams work together when they were once separate entities. He also sees the tremendous strengths and unique skill sets that come from both the once disparate wireline and wireless perspectives. His plan is to bring the best of both organizations to the forefront without destroying the culture of either. His vision? Over time, a new and better culture will grow to be ONE AT&T. Ernie is just the person to do it.

So don’t delay any further in reading this candid interview with OSP EXPO’s keynote presenter. Then, be sure to register for FREE* to listen to him live on October 13 in San Antonio, Texas where he shares his thoughts regarding “Best Practices for Delivering Everything-on-Demand (EOD) in a Recovering Economy”.

*Free registration at www.ospmag.com/expo. When prompted, enter priority code VIP2010.

OSP MAGAZINE: Is leadership an inherent skill or is it learned?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: That’s a great question. People have written many, many books about it.

I think there’s a whole lot about leadership that may be God-given. But I also think there’s a whole lot about it that can be taught. Examples of teaching can be found in the military academies where they take high school kids into their program. In four or five years they create men and women who have tremendous leadership skills.

I do think leadership is easier for some people because they have personality traits that others flock to. I also think the speed at which people embrace things is something that’s more God-given. That said, there are also things about leadership that can be learned and can be realigned.

OSP: What do you think is the best leadership quality you have?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: Hopefully, I have the ability to communicate a vision in simple terms to folks. I believe successful leaders must have the ability, to steal a military term: “to communicate the mission” and for people to understand the mission. Once people understand the mission, hopefully they can buy into it. Then, they almost inherently want to execute it. The key to success is simple clarity.

Interestingly, I’m always skeptical of people who try to take things and represent them as complex. From my perspective, creating complexity tells me they’re not comfortable with what they are trying to articulate or lead people to. Or even worse, they don’t understand it.

In making things complex, these folks think it gives them credibility and stature. My own personal belief is that by doing that, the exact opposite happens. If you can take very complex things and make them simple, more people will inherently believe you and ultimately follow you.

OSP: Now let’s move to infrastructure-related questions. The legacy network is going to be around for many years to come. Infonetics Research says it now costs $52+ a year to maintain a copper phone line today. What are some of the ways you are reducing costs to operate the copper network while evolving it to deliver higher bandwidths?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: Since the beginning of Lightspeed, we made a decision that our very first task, for a Distribution Area (DA) that’s going to be set up for Lightspeed, we do “conditioning” work. So, we literally go into that DA, and our engineers draw up a job to send into the field for construction, and splicing technicians. The work order specifies two principal things:

1. In any location where there are ready access terminals, we remove them and make them hard count.

2. We remove all bridged taps. We also do our best to test and fix bonding and grounding problems. Bonding and grounding, along with the removal of the bridge taps are really, really critical.

By the way, we’ve patented this process and sold it to other operators around the world.

These two steps are very critical to get the facilities in as nearly pristine shape as the day it was put in. In a lot of respects, when we finish, the plant is actually better than the day it was put in, because a lot of that design did not remove the bridge taps.

OSP: How long does that process take?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: It depends on the number of locations you have to visit, so there’s some variability around this with respect to what kind of plant design is out there.

Depending on what was built out there, you can have several locations where you’d have very few places to go. You may have other locations where you have a lot of work to do. To begin, we cover the “one size fits all” conditioning. We go out to do that type, and we know it pays benefits.

As an example, if you look at the Code 4 Rate in a Lightspeed DA and you compare it to the non-Lightspeed DA’s, where conditioning has taken place, our Code 4 Rate is about 40% below the non-Lightspeed DA. So we know conditioning has a very, very positive effect. You get the payback in less than three years.

Interestingly, Randy Tomlin and I coined the term electronic concrete because it connotes getting the maximum number of hands out of the plant. It is really critical to be able to successfully offer a video product that’s using VDSL2. VDSL2 requires very stable plant, and it’s very susceptible to short bridged taps. So, conditioning is the first thing we do and is very important.

OSP: And what are you doing from a rate-and-reach standpoint?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: It’s important to realize the big question is less about the rate and more about the reach for us to this point. Initially we did a controlled introduction of U-verse in San Antonio. Then, we moved to Houston and subsequently spread out from there. We started with a reach on a single 26 gauge pair of about 2,300 feet from the Video Ready Access Device (VRAD).

We worked with AT&T Labs and a group within the Labs called Network Systems Engineering (NSE). There’s a guy named Steve Spazzato that has that team. NSE is chock full of brilliant people. With a lot of their help we did a lot of very rigorous statistical work and field work to determine the limits on where we could push the reach on these single 26-gauge pair to about 3,000 feet. If it’s 24-gauge you can go out to about 3,500 more or less. This is all because you’ve got different gauge wire. So, we’ve been building the plant that way since the early days of our product introduction.

About three years ago we also launched an effort that we called iNID or the intelligent NID. As you know, every provider hangs a network interface device, or NID, on the back of your house and that’s the demarcation point between the LEC and the customer.

Everything to the customer’s side of the NID is customer-owned wiring. We have wiring plans, as does every other big telephone company, and a lot of small ones. But it’s customer-owned wiring, and all of the CPE is customer-owned CPE. That’s what people forget. That definition is an artifact of divestiture.

Before divestiture, AT&T owned everything all the way through the customer premises including the instrument. You rented the telephone instrument from AT&T. But divestiture said, “Your network stops at the back of the house.” It also said, “Providers can play in the house but that’s non-regulated work, and the customer owns that wire.” That’s how those demarcation points were created.

We started this concept called iNID or intelligent NID. The current NID is a passive device. It has a protector in it for electrical protection. You terminate the drop cable and terminate the inside wire and make your connections.

The iNID is an active device that allows us to use pair bonding. iNID is rolling out right now. We’ve been in friendly trials and are extending the trials to some non-friendlies. And as we get into the middle of the summer and later this year, we will be pushing it out on GA basis.

As you know, VDSL2, is standards-based. One of the benefits of getting the VDSL standards nailed down back in 2005 was that it contemplated pair bonding. The original non-standards based versions of DSL never contemplated pair bonding. Now ADSL2 and 2+ were standards-based and they also contemplated pair bonding. People realized the first DSL did not do that, which is why you were limited to about 6 Mbs on ATM-based DSL in a lab environment.

With VDSL2+, you can get up to 32 Mbs and you can pair bond it, which means you can get up to 64 Mbs. The pair bonding game lets you leverage the rate and the reach to your advantage. We will use it both ways; it allows us to extend that 3,000 feet out to about 5,500 feet.

That’s relevant because we have a standard profile that supports U-verse which is 25 Mbs down and 2 Mbs up profile. It currently supports 2 HD channels, 2 SD channels, data, and U-verse Voice. You can take that profile out to the distances I previously mentioned. Additionally, we rolled out a 32 Mbs profile recently and that gets you a 3rd HD channel and data speeds up to 24 Mbs.

In our network, that gets you past about 97% of our people that sit in all of our DAs. So there is 3-4% beyond that at the very edges of DAs. We don’t think the coverage issue is that big of deal once you get the pair-bonded iNID. And I suspect other companies will use their version of that. Some may already be playing with the equivalent, but I’ll think we’ll be the first to do it at scale. In this country we have the most iNID customers; in fact, we’re well past 2 million U-verse subscribers. We did that at the end of last year. We grew a million net subs over the last 2 years and would expect to do that -- if not better -- this year. So, it’s going to open up a whole new arena of sellable homes.

OSP: What about the really heavy user?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: For someone at 2,000 feet, who has a home theater and needs 4HD channels plus, we can also put an iNID on their house. They’re not limited by reach or distance. They’re limited by bandwidth. But, with pair-bonding I can double their bandwidth. So, instead of giving them a 25meg profile, I can give them a 50meg profile.

So it works both on rate and in reach, and we’re literally sitting on the precipice of a mass roll-out of that technology. It’s been a long, hard slog to get there, but we’re there.

OSP: Sounds exciting.

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: Yes, it is. As a customer, you may not even know you’re on an iNID. You just know it works.

OSP: What is the biggest issue for you as a network services group right now in terms of wireline and wireless engineering?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: I’ll answer it this way. I spend about 85% of my time today on wireless stuff, because I now have both. I have all of the cell sites nationwide to build, turn up, and operate. Bill Hoag runs NP&E and the RAN team (Radio Access Network), and they look at overall wireless performance with his group.

Let’s be honest. The explosive growth of devices like the iPad is both a blessing and a curse. You’ve heard me say this publicly. The blessing part of them is that they’re really cool, and using them is really easy. There’s also a corresponding explosion in apps that make everybody’s life easier and allows us to be more productive. The curse side is that they’re so easy to use people flock to them like ducks to water.

The growth of data on the network is exploding almost at exponential rates. So, getting ahead of that, and staying ahead of that, is proving to be very, very tough. We’ve made huge progress in the last year, but we’re not done. We still have 3 cities where we’re really focusing. As an example, New York is much better. We’ve addressed this many times. Rick Lindner, our CFO, did in the first quarter of our earnings call. John Stankey addressed it in the fourth quarter earnings call in January. The good news is we’ve made a lot of progress in New York. It’s not where we want it to be, but it’s a lot better than it was.

We’re doing the same things in L.A. and San Francisco. So, I kiddingly tell people -- my internal guys -- that those anchor cities are like anchor tenants in a mall. They’re like Saks, Niemen Marcus, and Nordstrom. If you think about our wireless network as that big mall, we have to have good, solid, anchor tenants. If we don’t, (excuse my English) “Ain’t nobody gonna come to the rest of the mall.”

‘Cuz while it’s interesting to know what goes on in Wichita, Kansas, and in Little Rock, Arkansas, and other second tier cities, the big players and the big activities go to the big cities. So Job One is getting the network up to the standards we want in those big cities. And we’re literally spending billions of dollars to do that.

Interestingly, if you had asked me that question 5 years ago, I would have said I’m spending 85% of my time on U-verse -- which I did.

U-verse has now become pretty much business as usual. I spend about 5% of my time worrying about dealing with U-verse issues, because the teams just do a marvelous job of knocking the cover off that ball in build and delivery. Costs look good. The product gets delivered. Customers love it.

It wasn’t that way 4 or 5 years ago because U-verse was very embryonic. And while wireless is not embryonic, the technology has changed so much and the growth in data has become the big challenge. So, it feels like it’s a little embryonic.

The key is that so we don’t think of AT&T anymore as either a wireless company or as a wireline company. We now call it ONE AT&T. That’s our internal code for saying, “We’re not going to operate this place anymore as a wireline company and a wireless company, because the customers don’t make that distinction.”

We’re going to operate it as ONE AT&T. There’s just one network. That network has wireless elements in it, and it has wireline elements in it. Certain devices use different parts of it, but there’s very little distinction.

So, we’re blending those teams together big time and we’re not done yet. We may be past half-way, but we’ve made a ton of progress and we’ve got a long way to go. But we kind of think of it now as “it is just the network.” All of us engine-room guys are out there to build the network and operate it in a manner that makes sure that our sales force and our business or residential consumers get the best experience they can have. That’s what we’re about.

OSP: What’s the biggest challenge to blending those groups?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: There clearly are still big challenges. Culturally, the wireless people were very entrepreneurial and very used to being fleet-of-foot.

The wireline guys are less fleet-of-foot, less entrepreneurial. But, they are way better at rigor, way better at scaling to very large levels, way better at taking cost out of the business. And so what we’re trying to do is take equal parts of this and that and put them together. We believe if we put them together smartly, and don’t destroy either culture, we have a really powerful thing. A new and better culture, if you will.

And so, there’s goodness that goes both ways, and it lets us lower our unit cost and make money. Like it or not, we’re in a world of wireless. For years revenue grew, you know, 20-30% compounded annual growth rate, if not higher. And when you’re growing top line revenue in any business at that rate, you can paper over a lot of cracks on the rise, if you know what I mean.

But the old S-curve we all learned about in business school is alive and well, and we’re kinda gettin’ up to the top of the S-curve where that revenue growth rate is flattening out. It’s natural that the markets are getting fairly saturated.

So it’s not like we’re not selling poorly, it’s just that most people have 2 or 3 cell phones at their house. But when the revenue flattens out, the only way you maintain the kind of operating margins and growth margins you need is to take cost out of the operating side.

That was one of the reasons that our leadership said, “We can’t keep doin’ what we’ve been doin’. We’ve got to put these things together and operate this company as ONE AT&T.” But putting the cultures together is not an easy thing, and it’s not a fast thing. Cultures are slow to build and they’re slow to change. So, not being a patient person by nature, it’s sometimes very hard to remind yourself that this is a multi-year exercise. We’re creating a new culture. It’s different from either of the old ones, and there’ll be people out there after I’m long gone that will probably see that through and get the continued benefits of it.

If we do it right now, they’ll be the beneficiaries. If we screw it up now, they’ll be the ones cleaning our mess up. And our job is to not leave them a mess.

OSP: Now, let’s talk about vendors relationships. I was very fortunate to be at the KGP Logistics Pinnacle Conference where Tim Harden presented in April. I was talking with him about the “domain” strategy AT&T has initiated. What is the advice you can give to vendors, both small and large, to show them that the door is not closed entirely if they’re not a domain vendor? And what’s the best advice you can give all vendors about how to work with AT&T in the future?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: I’m not the domain expert. Tim would be better versed to take you deep into that subject. So my answers may be a bit superficial, I suspect, as I tackle this question. But, as we’ve gotten bigger and bigger, our vendor relationships have gotten more and more complex. And with complexity comes cost, and it also tends to slow things down.

As I understand it, one of the things we wanted to do was to simplify that model. We constructed a model that revolves around 8 or 9 domains. There may be more as technology changes. Now we say, “We’re going to try to pick a couple of valued partners within each domain, and that’s who we’re going to do business with.”

We expect those domain vendors to bring us more complete solutions that are closer, if not ready, for prime time introduction. The objective is to burn less lab cycles testing their equipment, verifying that it meets our business requirements. All of that costs money, because there are extensive lab organizations that have to do all that testing. We burn a lot of cycles getting that done.

The door is not closed to people who are not domain suppliers or domain vendors, however you want to say it. But I think the ones who were not chosen are going to have to get used to building and establishing relationships with the domain suppliers.

The domain vendors have to partner with small vendors so they can bring a complete solution to AT&T. Everybody in this world today is sensitive to speed-to-market. So the door’s not shut to smaller vendors, it’s just a different door. And that’s going to require some getting used to. So, in a nutshell, it’s designed not to close doors, but to change doors -- to simplify our world, allow us to go faster, and take cost out of our business, which is what we’re about.

Not surprisingly, the model is often misunderstood. It’s often misreported as well, so I get tons of vendors saying, “Oh, my god, the sky is falling. What am I gonna do?” And I spend a lot of time saying, “Wait a minute. Do you even really understand the model?” And I find that in a lot of cases, people don’t.

OSP: Let’s now get back to the grassroots of AT&T. Let’s talk about the roles of the technician. I feel like the technician is becoming such an important weapon for you all. What is AT&T’s perspective on the importance of growing their technician’s skill sets and their customer sensitivity training? Because in the race to dominate the digital home, the techs ARE the face of AT&T.

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: Multiple times I have said that the home is getting to be a very complex thing. I even repeated it in your Thought Leader columns last year. And it’s a darn big deal about how you manage those complex in-home LANS. It’s the next battleground, the next opportunity area. I believed it when I said it back in 2005. What I’m seeing unfold with U-verse tells me that I am right. In fact, AT&T has got a group of people that are working on this multi-layered problem.

As an example, our Prem Techs who work for Randy Tomlin go in and install U-verse. To do that, they have to install pretty complex LANS and hook up set-top boxes and RGs, along with data networks and video networks and voice networks. That’s pretty complex stuff for the home compared to what it was 20 years ago when we worried about making POTS lines work.

Now there’s another layer of customer needs that are very sophisticated. That customer has home theaters, very complex data needs, lots of devices in the home -- printers, computers -- many of which are wireless. So the management of that type of home network as well as the securitization of that home network is complex.

For that customer, we’ve been building a group of technicians called ConnecTechs. These are the Green Berets that go in and handle these very complex installations. We will continue to grow that group because we think there’s a huge need there. We also believe there’s a huge business opportunity there.

OSP: What percentage of the tech force is the ConnecTechs?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: It’s relatively small today, because we’re kind of tiptoeing into that pond. But I think it will grow as a function of what the marketplace is demanding.

We believe that people have an inherent trust of an AT&T guy knocking on their door. There is perceived value and credibility in sending somebody to your door who’s wearing an AT&T badge, is dressed in an AT&T uniform, is driving an AT&T truck. Compare that to some contractor pulling up in front of your house to install something. They’re wearing a tank-top shirt, they’ve got an old ladder thrown on their truck, and their radio is blaring. Does that inspire confidence?

So, we want to serve all parts of the marketplace, whether it’s a relatively simple Triple Play install that Randy’s Prem Tech does or a very complex ConnecTech in-home theater install for a big daily user.

The good news is that we do that really, really well today. We’ve secured some recent data from one of our big external data organizations that benchmarked our Prem Techs against everybody else in the industry. And in every part of the country, it’s not even close. Our Techs score higher on a 100-point scale than anybody else’s technicians.

OSP: Wow!

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: And some of these scores are the little simple things you wouldn’t think matter.

OSP: Blue booties?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: I was going to say the feedback we get from everybody is the blue booties. But let me tell you an additional nuance we learned. This is part of our learning organization mantra. We learned that if the technician gets to the front door and rings your door bell and already has his blue booties on, you may not notice. But if the technician makes a bit of a production about putting on the blue booties while you’re standing there watching them. It proves the fact that AT&T is paying particular attention to making sure we respect your house. And that is EXTREMELY powerful to the owner of the home.

I hear it over and over. It is the most unsolicited comment any of us get about U-verse, and it’s the first thing that comes out of peoples’ mouths. It’s not, “Well, I love the user interface.” “I love the product.” “I love the screen quality.” They say, “Your installer in those blue booties was a homerun.”

I’ll give you another nuance you wouldn’t think about. In the south, when most of our techs drive up to a customer’s home, they’ve got sunglasses on. We’ve learned that it’s powerful that they take their sunglasses off, so the customer can see their eyes and the customer is not looking at a pair of really dark shades.

There are many little things in terms of that first 30 seconds in front of that customer that can either cement a really good impression or create a wall that you have to overcome. They are little subtle things that are easy to do. When you tell the techs, a lot of them react like, “Ah…I never thought about that, but you’re right.” And then they like the results they see in their customer feedback scores.

I believe the sum of that stuff, not one thing but the sum of the subtle things is one of the reasons our Technicians blow these people away when our customers are surveyed. And we’re proud of that.

You see, that credibility is really powerful. We only half-kiddingly say, “Our technicians can fix 8 or 10 upstream screw-ups if they go out and do it right.” Why? Because they are the last person in front of the customer. They have those moments of truth with the customer. And if they do their job really well they are an offensive weapon.

OSP: What qualifies technicians as ConnecTechs? What additional training do they need? Is it just for U-verse?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: U-verse offers some prerequisite training. But the ConnecTechs get additional data training. They’ve got to be really comfortable with home theater technology. They’re further up the AV pecking order than a standard U-verse Prem Tech. Don’t get me wrong. The U-verse Prem Techs are pretty high up in that pecking order, but ConnecTechs are dealing with a customers’ sophisticated in-home media room, HD, and a 1080p projector unit with surround sound that is also hooked up to the stereo. That’s complex stuff and is big in the domain of the AV world.

We want to offer guys who can handle that so they must get all of that extra training. So, ConnecTechs are kind of like a Prem Techs Plus or Prem Techs On Steroids. Clearly, they have to demonstrate the ability to do that. And in terms of attitude, they have to want to go get that training.

OSP: That naturally leads to my next question. How can techs prove that they want to be one of those elites?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: They have to prove they are one of our best and brightest Prem Techs. They have to deliver the best productivity, the best quality, best safety, and overall best customer experience. It’s not hard to pick these people out, you know.

We tend to look at our techs every month in what we call the quintile analysis. We break them into 20% buckets and we look at all these dimensions I mentioned before: productivity, safety, quality, customer interaction. We have a program called 5-Star, and depending on how they’re doing in those dimensions, they can be kind of a No-Star tech or be what we call our 5-Star Techs. Those 5-Star techs are likely to be the ones we invite to get this extra training and move up to a ConnecTech.

OSP: Next, I’m going to ask a little bit about vision. Obviously, a big change we already discussed relates to bringing the two network organizations into one: ONE AT&T.

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: It’s not about bringing two network organizations together.

It’s about bringing 2 companies together: a wireline company and a wireless company. We’re as much ONE AT&T in Ralph’s consumer business unit and Ron’s ABS business unit as we are in network. This is not about putting 2 networks together. That is a necessary component to it, but it’s not sufficient to create the total. We are about blending 2 distinct cultures and organizations together into ONE AT&T. It’s not ONE AT&T Network -- it’s ONE AT&T. It’s an important subtlety.

OSP: So, how has that changed your role and your areas of expertise as SVP of Engineering and Construction?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: It’s forced me to do what I preach to others. You have to constantly retool yourself. You have to constantly re-educate yourself. I am the perfect example. All of a sudden I wake up one day and now I’m equal parts wireline and wireless. Well, I haven’t spent any time in the wireless business. I’ve observed it from inside and from afar. But I’ve now had to sheep dip myself in a lot of things wireless and try to get up that learning curve very, very quickly.

So, the moral of that story is that it doesn’t matter what level you are in this business. If you’re not learning all the time, you’re falling behind. And I think it’s a good thing. It’s changed my perspective recently, I’ve had to learn a helluva lot more stuff I didn’t have to know before.

OSP: Thank you for that insight. Believe it or not, we’re starting to wind down here with my questions.

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: You’ve gotta have one on your list you just didn’t think I would answer.

OSP: Actually there’s one about the staff. As a result of these changes, what is happening to your/our OSP professionals? Are they being further downsized? Are more layoffs coming? How is your network organization changing in terms of head count?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: There’s a simple answer to that question. And respectfully, I’ll just plagiarize Randall Stephenson and/or John Stankey’s words because they say it really well. We’re growing in parts of our business. Randy Tomlin’s group is growing like crazy. The number of Techs he’s added over the last 2 years is phenomenal. Interestingly, no one says, “Wow! You’ve added, 5,000 Prem Techs.” They want to talk about the 2,000 POTS people you laid off, because that’s the headline.

They don’t understand that AT&T is SO big that there will always be pieces of our business that are shrinking. That’s because those parts of the business are mature. There are also going to be parts that are immature and are growing. As a business we have to continually reinvent ourselves.

So, yes, there will be people who will get laid off in pockets of AT&T, because that’s not the growing part of our business anymore. I grew up in the circuit switch side of the business. It’s pretty hard for me to say this, but circuit switch POTS is dying. And so you either retool yourself and learn about large-routed Packet Networks, or, as Darwin said, “You’re gonna be selected against.” Natural selection in the business world is going to kick in. Though it sounds cruel and kind of cold, I don’t mean it that way. It’s just a fact.

So, as I said, if you’re not moving fast, you’re falling behind. Will that dynamic continue in our business? Absolutely. Will that result in us downsizing in places and growing others? Absolutely. I’ve been here 35 years. That’s been going on since the day I walked in the door, and it’ll be going on when I leave.

We don’t live on an island by ourselves. We live in a world where there’s a marketplace out there that puts demands on us. So, we have to create really good products. People have to really want them. That’s the way you grow this business, and if you do that well then you’ll have more people. If you don’t, you won’t be here anymore.

And as an avid capitalist, I think that’s the way it ought to be.

OSP: One more final question, more on the personal side of things. If you hadn't become what you are today, what would you have liked to be besides a professional golfer?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: Ah, ah! That's not fair! I was gonna say professional golfer!

OSP: I knew that. Your second choice?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: If I couldn't be a professional golfer, I think I'd like to be a saltwater professional fishing guide.

I was born and raised in Corpus Christi, and I grew up saltwater fishing and surfing. And I love saltwater fishing. So, I think the ability to take people and guide them to catch fish would be like being on vacation all the time.

The problem is I'm not sure you could make a great living at it, but it sure would be a helluva lot of fun. Still, my first choice would be to be a professional golfer.

OSP: I get the golfing thing because I love tennis. Yet, I've always wondered if I turned the hobby I loved into a full-time job, would it be as fun?

ERNIE CAREY, AT&T: Well, people always say there's only so much golf you can play. And I say, "Yeah, but it's only limited by daylight hours." I don't have the God-given talent to be a professional golfer, but I sure would like to have it.

Ernie J. Carey
Senior Vice President - Construction and Engineering
AT&T

Ernie Carey, Senior Vice President - Construction and Engineering, is responsible for planning, design, construction and capital maintenance of the wireline and wireless network infrastructure across AT&T’s national footprint, including Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. He is also responsible for the Lightspeed build, which prepares AT&T facilities to be able to support the entire U-verse product set; i.e. voice, video and data. He was appointed to his current position in March 2008.

Since July 2007, Carey served as Senior Vice President-Network Services for AT&T Southwest, where he was responsible for the customer provisioning, repair, construction and maintenance of the network infrastructure in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Previously he served as Vice President, Advanced Network Technologies, where he was responsible for the network planning and engineering for AT&T’s premier video offering, AT&T U-verseSM TV, and expanding AT&T’s fiber-optics network deeper into neighborhoods to deliver AT&T U-verse TV, voice and high-speed Internet access services. This fiber expansion enables AT&T U-verse TV to be delivered over a 100 percent pure IP platform. This IP platform delivers a better entertainment experience to AT&T customers through its ability to easily integrate and deliver new features. AT&T companies expect to pass approximately 30 million households by the end of 2011 as part of the initial deployment, using fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies.

Carey began his career with Southwestern Bell in 1975, in Houston, after graduating from college and holds both BBA and MBA degrees. He progressed through a series of operations, engineering, and marketing jobs in Southwestern Bell/SBC and now AT&T.

Carey is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Sam Houston Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He was appointed by then Governor Bush as a member of the Commission on State Emergency Communications and also served for 8 years on the Board of Directors of the Greater Harris County E911 District. He is also a former board member of the Houston Technology Advisory Board as well as the Technology Opportunity Institute, and a former member of the Engineering Advisory Board, College of Engineering, at The University of Houston. He currently serves on the board of the Circle Ten Council for the Boy Scouts of America in Dallas.

Carey, and his wife, Marylin, have been married for 28 years and have one son, Robert.

Join Ernie Carey, SVP – C&E, AT&T, as he explores “Best Practices for Delivering Everything-on-Demand (EOD) in a Recovering Economy” during the keynote address at OSP EXPO 2010. October 13th, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

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