Few carriers have put as much strain on their technology personnel over the past several years as Cingular Wireless L.L.C. From its beginnings as the merged wireless operations of BellSouth Corp. and SBC Communications Inc. to the carrier’s decision in 2001 to migrate its entire network to GSM-based technology to its recent spending spree that has included both spectrum purchases and a $41 billion acquisition of rival AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Cingular’s network has been in a near constant state of flux.
One of the people responsible for spearheading Cingular’s recent network transformation is Chief Technology Officer Kristin Rinne, who despite only taking over the CTO job permanently last year, packs a wealth of experience in both the implementation of new technology as well as network integration, thanks to her more than 25 years of experience in the telecom industry.
“I’ve been through six different mergers,” Rinne explained. “Because of my role and all the integration I had the opportunity to see if there was a different way to address an issue, or if there is a different way to address a technology or different process. I think those have been learning and growing experiences.”
Rinne is also one of a growing number of women who have ascended the predominately male industry, especially in a technology role.
Rinne got her start in telecom in 1976 joining Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. fresh out of Washburn University in Topeka, Kan. Rinne, who graduated with a degree in mathematics, began as a network engineer for Southwestern Bell, and admits that her gender was one of the reasons she was hired.
“The very first position I was recruited for, that is exactly what they were looking for,” Rinne recalled. “From the very beginning I think SBC was very open to women in technology positions. There was openness to where I don’t really think about how many men or women might be in a typical meeting because it has just not been a issue in my interfaces internal to the company.”
While Rinne downplayed the impact of gender on her working conditions, she did note an instance several years ago when it provided comic relief.
“There was an experience about 8 years ago when one of my peers from an infrastructure vendor happened to also be a female and we were talking about a very challenging and difficult issue,” Rinne said. “We took a break and went to the restroom and were standing in there continuing the conversation. We came out of the restroom and my boss and her boss were both standing there looking at us asking what have we been doing. I said we were just discussing business just like you guys have been able to do for years. It’s kind of fun in unique situations.”
Rinne also mentioned that suppliers looking to work with Cingular would be wise to get their surnames correct before sending a correspondence.
“I get a lot of e-mails from people that want to be suppliers asking if Mr. Rinne is interested,” Rinne said with a laugh. “But, they often don’t appear at the top of the list.”
Rinne worked her way through numerous management positions in Southwestern Bell’s wireline operations before landing with the company’s wireless division in 1995. While working with SBC Wireless-where she was eventually named vice president of technology strategy-Rinne was quickly introduced to the flexible nature of the wireless business as SBC Wireless undertook a number of merger and acquisitions with PacBell, Ameritech, ComCast and SNET.
In 2000, SBC Wireless made one of its biggest moves when it merged its wireless operations with BellSouth Corp. to form Cingular, which at the time became the nation’s second-largest wireless operator. The move united BellSouth’s GSM-based Southeastern footprint with SBC’s wide-ranging TDMA and GSM networks and required a different approach for Rinne-who was named Cingular’s vice president of technology and product realization.
“The creation of Cingular from a regional company to a national company and how we try to leverage our local history with our new national scale has been a transformation experience,” Rinne said. “The excitement of the different technologies and constant evolution just made it that much more exciting.”
Rinne noted that SBC’s experience with both GSM and TDMA helped ease the transition, but that the carrier knew it would have to make additional network migration decisions eventually due to growing demand for wireless data services. That decision came in 2001 when Cingular announced plans to overlay its entire network with GSM-based technology.
“It was when we began to see the potential and hear from our customers the demand for higher-speed data services that we were faced with the decision in terms of how do we evolve this,” Rinne said. “We really felt like the right choice for us was to leverage the technologies and experiences that we had both from a design capability as well as a support implementation capability and felt that GSM has a very strong roadmap. And I would say that’s been true over the past four years with GSM and holds true for the evolution to UMTS and HSDPA.”
The decision was not easy as Cingular had one of the weakest spectrum positions relative to its customer base of the nation’s larger operators and would have to support analog, TDMA, GSM and next-generation data services from its network. More challenging was the need for GSM-based equipment that operated in the 850 MHz spectrum bands, which made up a majority of Cingular’s spectrum holdings, but up to that point had yet to be produced.
Rinne noted that Cingular’s infrastructure partners stepped up to the plate and helped ease the carrier’s transition.
“Partners in general are critical to all of our success,” Rinne explained. “Assuring that we have aligned our roadmaps and have the right business arrangements and are continuing to grow with those that execute well with our roadmaps has been very important. We have a narrow set of partners that we work with to ensure that we are continually aligned and striving toward the customer service that we are trying to provide in the marketplace. They recognize the opportunity in the U.S. and recognize that there are things that they learn here and that we challenge them for that benefit them across the globe.”
Cingular eventually began to mitigate its spectrum issues through numerous acquisitions, and appears to have completely solved them with its recent acquisition of AWS. The move provided the carrier with sufficient spectrum to continue to support its legacy subscribers and the ability to launch advanced services. The acquisition also provided Cingular with access to AWS’ employees who had significant experience in wireless data applications.
“There are some very, very talented people at AT&T that we are looking to retain,” Rinne said. “They have a lot of experience in wireless data and we can definitely look at some of those processes and learn from them.”
As for the future, Rinne predicts personalization will be a key driver with wireless carriers moving away from trying to find one “killer” application, and instead offer applications that can be customized by users.
“I think the key for the future is continually allow the customer to personalize,” Rinne said. “It’s a bit different than you planned for 20 years ago when you were looking for that home-run technology or product. Now what you are looking for is the product that allows the customer to customize the product in terms of ringtones and games and how they want to use the various tools that we provide. That’s how you focus and win in the marketplace. You focus more on how do we make it easy for the customer to use and buy and distribute different feature functionality. The killer app is now usability.”
