COMMENTARY: John Stankey, AT&T’s chairman and CEO, recently posted a thought on LinkedIn worth reflecting on: technology doesn’t build itself, and the people who build it deserve to be seen. That’s a good instinct, and a true one. We’d like to see it extended to a tower crew, too.
Stankey used LinkedIn to make the case that human intelligence, not artificial intelligence, is what actually gets infrastructure built — quoting a company technician, Matt Johnson, who told him, “You’re not going to get AI to do this. This is HI, human intelligence.” Stankey tied that line to AT&T’s fiber hiring numbers: 10,000 broadband construction and fiber technician workers hired over three years, 3,000 more fiber techs needed this year alone, all of it framed as “skilled union careers that offer good wages, strong benefits, and the opportunity to build a future.”
That’s a genuinely good message, and one worth taking at face value. It’s also, understandably, a story about fiber — the part of AT&T’s network where hiring has been strong and growing. It says less about the wireless side of the same industry, where a different set of technicians — the ones who climb the towers AT&T’s own network depends on — have spent the past year absorbing layoffs even as fiber pay climbed. We don’t think that’s a contradiction Stankey intended. We think it’s one he may simply not have in full view yet, and we’d like to help change that.
An invitation, offered in the same spirit
Here’s a suggestion for the chairman, offered in the same constructive spirit as his post: visit a cell site under construction. Not a fiber splice cabinet, not a data center — a tower. Stand at the base of a 200-foot structure with a contractor’s crew on a hot afternoon and hear directly from the owner of that contracting company how the year has gone. Hear what carrier matrix pricing from the Big Three has meant for his margins, and how many climbers he’s had to lay off since the fourth quarter of 2025, when tower hiring across U.S. telecom construction fell to its lowest point in twenty years — even as fiber pay kept climbing.
It’s worth knowing, too, that this isn’t the industry’s first promise of a hiring wave. Five years ago, similar projections and similar coverage pointed toward tens of thousands of new tower jobs on the way. That wave didn’t arrive as forecast, and the tower workforce contracted instead. We don’t say that to score a point — we say it because it’s exactly the kind of on-the-ground context a site visit would surface in a way a LinkedIn post can’t.
Two workforces, one industry, worth seeing together
Stankey is publicly stating that AT&T needs fiber technicians and intends to pay for them — and that’s a good thing for AT&T to say and do. Tower technicians build and maintain the physical infrastructure carrying the same networks, often at meaningfully greater physical risk, and haven’t had the same level of public visibility or advocacy at the leadership level. We don’t think that’s a deliberate slight. We think it’s an easy thing for any large company to overlook when the loudest hiring numbers are on one side of the business.
Stankey wrote that “the companies that endure and thrive will be the ones that invest in” connectivity, computing power, and skilled workers. We agree, and we’d add one thing: investment isn’t only payroll for the roles a company is actively expanding. It’s also about how a company understands and supports the workforce it already depends on, especially the part under the most strain right now.
A standing invitation
So here’s a specific, low friction offer rather than a general ask. NATE — the Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, which represents the companies and crews that build and maintain the wireless side of AT&T’s network — would be glad to arrange a site visit for Chairman Stankey to a cell tower under construction.
He wouldn’t need to climb anything. FCC commissioners and members of Congress who write and vote on the rules governing this work and carrier requests and requirements have made time to visit active sites and watch highly skilled tower techs do their jobs up close; we think a carrier chairman whose network depends on that same work would find the time well spent too.
The ask is simple: stand at the base of a tower with the contracting company’s owner and the crew doing the AT&T required work, see what the job actually requires, and hear firsthand what the past year has looked like for the people building AT&T’s infrastructure. No press conference required. No LinkedIn post required, though we suspect there’d be a good one in it. Stankey has already shown he’s willing to publicly credit the people who build his network. We’d simply like the chance to introduce him to the other half of that workforce, in person, on their job site.
