AT&T CTO Outlines Plan to Become ‘Lowest Cost’ Data Transport Provider
Legg says converging networks, modernizing infrastructure, and expanding AI key to the plan.
August 12, 2025 – AT&T Chief Technology Officer Jeremy Legg outlined the company’s vision Monday to become the lowest cost transport provider on the internet.
Legg explained AT&T’s current technology strategy to reduce costs and improve network capabilities, starting with the convergence of wireline and wireless networks. He noted that convergence was a fundamental transformation in how the company will operate its networks, and will help make AT&T efficient and competitive going forward.
“In my world, convergence is about how we actually get both sides of our scale businesses running over the same pipe, and how we actually become the lowest cost transport provider on the internet,” Legg said, speaking at the KeyBanc Technology Leadership Forum in Park City, Utah.
The next component of AT&T’s strategy involves the transformation of their core network to software-defined – replacing proprietary hardware with x86 compute, Linux boxes, and commodity chips – so network updates and routing can be managed through software rather than by physically installing new hardware.
While the core ring of AT&T’s network was already software defined, the company was currently extending this to their 4000+ central offices in what Legg called “a massive cost restructuring” and a “complete rebuild of the wireline network.”
“To give folks an idea of the size of this implementation, we're laying fiber roughly the equivalent from New York to L.A. every month,” Legg stated. “It's kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity, honestly, or at least once in a career opportunity, to be able to rebuild networks like that.”
To further modernize their infrastructure, Legg reported that AT&T was in the process of decommissioning as many of their legacy services as they can and replacing them with new, cloud-based products built on modern technology stacks. According to Legg, a couple thousand applications the company deemed were no longer necessary have already been retired.
Legg described legacy networks as a source of technical debt, but outlined a disciplined approach to manage this: isolate the costs of legacy infrastructure, minimize new investment in it, and shift human capital toward building and supporting new systems.
“I call it the run fast strategy,” Legg said. “How do we keep the new stuff running far enough ahead of the old stuff that ultimately it overtakes it.”
Legg acknowledged that retiring legacy networks cannot be done overnight, given the decades it took to build them, but stressed that AT&T has made significant progress and that this shift was essential for the company’s future competitiveness.
Legg also touched on AT&T’s increased utilization of artificial intelligence, noting that the company has over 600 models in production across its infrastructure. However, he claimed that while AT&T has built some large language models, the company’s primary focus is on leveraging AI and the underlying chips to analyze and act on AT&T’s proprietary network and customer data – data not available to public LLMs.
He listed several practical applications of AI at AT&T, including enhancing network operations and efficiency; improving customer relationships and personalizing services; detecting and preventing fraud; and resolving network issues more quickly. He also mentioned that AI was being integrated into some of AT&T’s products and services, namely cybersecurity measures, and can be used to block emerging AI-driven threats on its network.
“It’s really an exciting time to be in telecommunications,” Legg said. “It's really, you know, one of those moments where all the technology is transforming.”
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