AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson discusses future 'world without screens' at DC luncheon

AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson waved an iPhone as he was interviewed yesterday by Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein at the spring luncheon of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.:

Stephenson recalled a visit from Steve Jobs, before the iPhone's 2007 launch: "We were building a mobile Internet - that's what 3G was about. ... I didn't really know what the mobile Internet looked like. ... Just build it and people will use it - it's always been my philosophy. If you make something mobile, utility explodes."

• "And the guy in the black turtleneck shows up with a description, an explanation of a product. He didn't have a product, he had an explanation of a product: 'Think about a phone that doesn't have a keypad. It's just a screen, and it has little icons that you push [for] stock quotes, weather.'"
• "The minute we saw that, it was: That's the mobile internet. That's something we have to be a part of. That is what we are building the future for."

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