AT&T Joins TIP's Board of Directors

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has announced that AT&T has joined its Board of Directors and appointed Rob Soni, Vice President—Radio Access Network (RAN) Technology, AT&T Services, Inc., as the company’s representative.

Yago Tenorio, Chairman of TIP and Fellow and Network Architecture Director at Vodafone Group, commented on the appointment: “AT&T has been a trailblazer of open and disaggregated technologies. Rob’s appointment to TIP’s Board of Directors further reflects the global profile of our community, and we look forward to deepening our collaboration with the company and benefiting from Rob’s extensive experience.”

Rob Soni, Vice President—Radio Access Network (RAN) Technology, AT&T Services, Inc., said. “I’m delighted to have joined TIP’s Board of Directors and to meaningfully contribute towards driving the commercialization of open and disaggregated technologies across the globe. This appointment supports AT&T’s effort to deploy 70% of our wireless network traffic across open-capable platforms by late 2026 and aligns perfectly with our commitment to efficiency and innovation. As a global mobile operator, we see TIP as a critical part of realizing our strategic intent of leading industrialization of open and disaggregated solutions.”

Rob 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. This team drives our 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 teams and small teams to provide innovative solutions that have reached significant market penetration across 3G, 4G, and 5G networks in several large wireless operators around the world. 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 currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and three children.