With 4G ahead, AT&T names a wireless veteran as its CTO

Now that AT&T is starting to crystalize its strategy for the 4G wireless era, wireless industry veteran John Donovan has been named its chief technology officer.

Although AT&T announced the appointment just today, Donovan has actually been on the job at AT&T since at least Thursday of last week, when AT&T broke its silence about plans for its future LTE network. The company won a major chunk of B-Block spectrum in the FCC's recent 700 MHz auction, and boasted of that victory immediately after the FCC lifted its gag order around the auction.

During a conference call on Thursday, during which he was identified as AT&T's CTO, Donovan told press and analysts that AT&T will deploy LTE across its B-Block winnings in the 700 MHz auction, the 700 MHz C-Block holdings garnered from its acquisition of Aloha Partners, and advanced wireless services (AWS) won through an auction in 2006.

Donovan comes to AT&T from a strong background in wireless telcom, where he has hasically focused on common sense issues around how carriers can make money by providing devices, user interfaces, and services that customers really want.

Although Donovan's most recent job was at VeriSign, he arrived at that company in late 2006 as part of VeriSign's $56 million buyout of the 350-person wireless consulting firm he had headed at the time. VeriSign was then expanding past its long-time Internet security niche into digital media and mobile management. In his later role as VeriSign's executive VP for World Wide Sales and Services, Donovan seems to have held hefty sales force management and training duties right from the start.

In a financial conference call soon after he came aboard, for example, Donovan was asked by VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos to explain how how Verisign and inBound Wireless sales staff were being cross-trained to present the "full breadth" of the newly combined company's product portfolio to customers.

Whether or not sales force management turned out to be Donovan's favorite cup of tea, also during his tenure at VeriSign, the company launched new product offerings such as VeriSign Mobile Media Cast, for mobile podcasting, and the VeriSign Mobile Banking Solution.

But inBound Wireless also remained as a discrete entity within VeriSign, publishing white papers on topics such as "mobile operators' post launch device costs and the effect that an operator's device platform strategy can have on those costs."

Donovan's interest in profitability through customer product strategy stretches back to the days before inBound's acquisition.

In a podcast first aired back in 2005, and still posted on inBound's Web site, Donovan talked about why "the high cost of indoor [wireless] coverage must come down," along with "why wireless operator battles are changing from coverage and price plans to devices, functionality and ease of the user interface."

Before joining inBound, Donovan served as a director of industry practices for telecom and media at Deloitte Consulting. He is also listed as a current board member of 2Wire on that company's Web site. 2Wire produces "intelligent home servers," telecom broadband media platforms, and network gateway devices.

As chief technology officer of AT&T, Donovan replaces Chris Rice, who is moving over to the new role of executive vice president of Shared Services.