A Conversation With Glenn Lurie, Chief of AT&T Mobility

A Q&A with Glenn Lurie, Chief of AT&T Mobility. Even as AT&T has been busy expanding its wireless empire into other markets, like cars and home security, it remains at its heart a phone carrier. The company said on August 14 that it made some minor revisions to some of its most popular phone plans, offering more mobile data per buck. AT&T said customers subscribed to its most popular shared data plan, called Mobile Share Value, will now get 50 percent more data. Customers who were paying $100 a month for a shared bucket of 10 gigabytes of data will now get 15 gigabytes of data. The company added that the plan would include unlimited voice minutes and text messages to people in Canada and Mexico. In an interview, Glenn Lurie, the company’s chief of mobile, shared his thoughts about AT&T’s various phone plans in the face of myriad changes for the company, including the recently completed acquisition of DirecTV, which expands its presence in the TV market.

Asked what has the DirecTV acquisition done for his business, Lurie said, "It’s been a week. It’s a phenomenal opportunity for us. We’ve obviously been in the U-verse business and TV business before. Now, being the largest TV and video player in the world brings a whole bunch of benefits. DirecTV really makes us a different company. You’ve probably seen the original offer, the All in One Plan, where we bundle together four TVs and four smartphones for $200 a month. It’s game-changing when you have TV and wireless put together."