Keynote: Rob Soni, Vice President, AT&T

Rob Soni is the Vice president of AT&T. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of AT&T’s RAN architecture and infrastructure technical road maps for hardware and software, including baseband units, radios, antennas, and all ancillary components. In addition, his team oversees certification and development for RAN hardware, software, and features. His team drives strategy and contributions to global standards and to technical industry and government organizations.

Prior to joining AT&T, he led RAN architecture at VMware, overseeing their cloud platform infrastructure technology, including product definition and portfolio strategy. Rob also held technical roles with Nokia Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, and Lucent driving architecture, innovation and strategy for their entire wireless portfolio with a more recent particular focus on cloud RAN and 5G.

Through his many key roles on the product side driving cellular infrastructure, Rob has driven large and small teams to provide innovative solutions that have reached significant market penetration across 3G, 4G, and 5G networks in several large wireless operators worldwide. He has supported and developed technologies that significantly improved performance, increased resiliency, significantly decreased power consumption, and reduced total cost of ownership.

Rob holds a doctorate and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s in science in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and three children.