AT&T's private wireless chief departs

Jason Inskeep recently left his job at AT&T to move into a senior director position at consulting firm Slalom. Inskeep was the operator's primary executive for private wireless networks.

An AT&T representative didn't provide a name for Inskeep's replacement at the operator but said "the lines of business are covered."

Inskeep, for his part, said on social media that his new job at Slalom "aims to build upon the breadth and depth garnered at AT&T Business in key areas of 5G, IoT, Wi-Fi, Private 5G/LTE and their necessary convergence."

Jason Inskeep (Source: AT&T)

Inskeep had been with AT&T for more than a dozen years, first on the sales side and then, roughly eight years ago, he joined the AT&T Foundry operation near Dallas in a move that put him into the lab side of things. He won AT&T's "Visionary Awards" in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, he became the director of AT&T's 5G Center of Excellence, focusing on the operator's work in private wireless networking and edge computing. Last year, he became the senior assistant VP for the operator's 5G Center of Excellence, a continuation of growth for the operation.

"My team's kind of been like a SWAT team, attacking everything from our DoD [Department of Defense] customers to a couple [oil] refinery engagements," he told Light Reading earlier this year. "My team's looming in the background."

Related:AT&T's Jason Inskeep on the evolving private wireless landscape

A feather in Inskeep's cap arrived in May when AT&T won a $10 million contract for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport's private 5G business. The airport hosts 72.2 million passengers a year and employs 30,000 people across 26.9 miles.

Future of private wireless

Inskeep's departure comes at a critical time for AT&T. Private wireless networking has emerged as a major talking point for companies across the wireless industry as they look for areas of growth in 5G. 

Indeed, AT&T CEO John Stankey alluded to the opportunity during his company's recent quarterly conference call. "I actually think we're on the front end right now of many businesses now understanding that wireless technology is their next strategic frontier of how they engineer their processes in their company," he said last week, according to Seeking Alpha. "And I'm actually pretty bullish that what we saw in the early days of VPN were managed networks and managed capabilities and supported capabilities on complex networks were a big growth cycle in enterprise customers. I think we're going to see the same things start to emerge on the wireless side, and I think that's just going to be growth."

AT&T rivals Verizon and T-Mobile too have discussed private wireless networking as a major new growth opportunity. "CIOs everywhere are interested in this topic right now," T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said earlier this year. "And they're interested in it for a reason."

Related:How AT&T won DFW's $10M private 5G business