5. Ralph de la Vega - Most Powerful People in Wireless

Ralph de la Vega, CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Market

What makes him powerful: Under de la Vega's guidance, AT&T Mobility continues to benefit greatly from its exclusive deal with Apple to carry the iconic iPhone in the U.S. market. In third-quarter 2009, AT&T Mobility added 2 million wireless subscribers [1], a record number for the company, bringing its total base to 81.6 million. In addition, AT&T activated 3.2 million iPhones, the company's largest amount to date, with nearly 40 percent of those activations from customers new to AT&T.

But de la Vega is not banking on the iPhone alone to keep AT&T on its growth track--and with good reason--in a recent earnings call de la Vega hinted that the company may be losing its exclusive deal with Apple soon [2]. To compensate for that potential loss, the company has been growing its smartphone portfolio and cleverly leading the way with its emerging devices division. In the past year, AT&T's emerging devices division has partnered with Jasper Wireless to help it activate and provision devices and has racked up several high-profile ereader deals with the likes of Amazon, Sony and Plastic Logic.

A long-time telecom executive, de la Vega has been praised for his ability to navigate tough situations. This skill will certainly come in handy in the months ahead. AT&T is currently facing an enormous obstacle in the FCC's decision to impose net neutrality rules, which if passed will have a big impact on AT&T's wireless business and its spectrum assets. During the 700 MHz spectrum auction, the carrier paid extra for spectrum that did not carry open-access stipulations. If the FCC imposes net neutrality regulations, the move would essentially negate the premium AT&T paid by retroactively placing similar open-access stipulations on AT&T's network.

In his role at AT&T and as the incoming chairman of the CTIA, de la Vega has been an outspoken critic of the FCC's plan. At the recent CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment conference in San Diego, he defended the U.S. wireless industry's competitive positioning [3], saying that the U.S. indeed is a competitive market with 173 wireless carriers and one of the lowest airtime price-per-minute ratios of any country in the world.

As if heading up the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. and chairing a major industry association isn't a big enough job, de la Vega also managed to find time to write a book about his life as a Cuban emigrant and the lessons he learned from this experience. The book, "Obstacles Welcome: How to Turn Adversity into Advantage in Business and in Life," is available in hardback and (of course!) in digital for the Amazon Kindle. --Sue [4]