SAN DIEGO – The nation’s wireless CEOs are locked in a vicious battle over the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, but they made thoroughly nice at today’s CTIA Wireless keynote address, praising the wireless industry’s innovation, environmental awareness, and social responsibility.
Sure, there were a few digs: Sprint CEO Dan Hesse compared AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega to Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, while de la Vega called Hesse “the best actor in wireless.” Sprint steadfastly opposes AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile, while AT&T argues Sprint isn’t truly interested in nationwide competition but rather in weakening AT&T.
Other than those brief digs, Hesse, de la Vega and Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead focused instead on noncontroversial topics on which everyone could agree. Vega went into great length about how AT&T is nurturing small mobile developers and ideas within AT&T by improving collaboration both within the company and with partners.
“In our industry the driving force that is driving the revolution and the innovation I think is going to be collaboration,” de la Vega said.
Mead also focused on “collaboration” as his theme.
“Even though the wireless industry is fiercely competitive, it’s also been able to grow and flourish because of mutual cooperation,” Mead said, mentioning roaming agreements and cross-carrier text messaging as examples of inter-carrier cooperation.
All three CEOs talked a lot about how wireless devices can improve health care, especially in terms of tele-medicine and keeping elderly people safe. Wearable technology is a major new frontier, monitoring vital signs for everyone from newborns to marathon runners, de La Vega said. AT&T ran several videos from partners producing devices from fall detectors to cars, all praising AT&T as a helpful partner.
Mead touted Verizon’s innovation centers, which bring potential device manufacturers closer to Verizon Wireless to make device development easier. He also had some videos showing off solutions in health care, transportation, energy use, and banking. Comparing the two similar videos, Verizon’s theme music is much more aggressive than AT&T’s; AT&T went into more depth about a few individual partners.
“Creative partnerships have been a key focus area for us at Verizon Wireless for the past several years,” Mead said.
Hesse, for his part, praised the cellular industry’s pursuit of environmental goals and its moves against distracted driving. U.S. wireless carriers are using more recycled plastics, they’re moving to universal MicroSD-based chargers for smartphones, and they’re dramatically increasing the number of products that are taken back for recycling, Hesse said.
“The EPA invited Sprint, along with Dell and Sony, to be the first companies to publicly commit to following a new national e-waste strategy. we have a goal to recycle 90 percent of all devices we sell by 2017, and we’re already halfway there,” he said.
CTIA CEO Steve Largent, meanwhile, repeated his frequent mantra: the wireless industry needs more spectrum if it’s going to continue to innovate. The organization is working on getting broadcasters to voluntarily give up some spectrum for auction, and wants the government to auction off some currently government-used spectrum as well, he said.
“More jobs, more growth, more spectrum is a win for America, and we’re calling on Congress to clear the air,” he said.
Largent also took a few minutes to eulogize Steve Jobs, reminding viewers that Apple is a member of the CTIA trade organization (even though the company has never exhibited at, spoken at, or even formally attended a public CTIA event).
“Steve Jobs has left a legacy of innovation and disruption in how we fundamentally communicate. The development of the iPhone is at the top of the list,” he said.
For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.