Life After The iPhone: How AT&T's Bet On Apple Mobilized The Company [telecom]

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Connie Guglielmo, Forbes Staff 1/2/2013

Steve Jobs needed some advice. It was 2006, and Apple was working on the design for its first smartphone. Jobs had questions about its radio. So he called up Ralph de la Vega, Cingular Wireless' chief operating officer, who had helped broker the exclusive deal between Jobs and the telco, soon to be part of AT&T Inc., to carry the phone. "How do you make this device be a really good phone?" de la Vega recalls Jobs asking. "I'm not talking about how to build a keyboard and things like that. But I'm saying the innards of a radio that worked well."