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Fueling justification of its aggressive fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) buildout, AT&T mentioned it witnessed 37% service penetrations throughout its whole fiber footprint, together with new-build areas, final yr.
In markets similar to New Orleans, Miami and Louisville, the place AT&T is now constructing FTTP quickly, penetrations are “nicely north of 30% after solely 12 months of fiber deployment,” Jenifer Robertson, AT&T’s EVP and GM, mobility, mentioned Friday throughout AT&T’s annual analyst and investor day.
By comparability, Frontier Communications, a telco with a rural-skewing footprint, has seen penetration charges of practically 42% within the mature elements of its fiber footprint, and is seeing penetrations of twenty-two% on the 12-month mark in new-build areas.
About two-thirds of AT&T’s fiber provides are new to AT&T, Robertson added. With a nod towards service bundling, AT&T can also be seeing a 50% increase in wi-fi market share in its fiber footprint.
(Supply: Roman Tiraspolsky/Alamy Inventory Photograph)
AT&T constructed about 2.6 million new fiber areas in 2021. The corporate reiterated a plan to construct out a footprint of 30 million-plus areas (25 million residential, 4 million small companies and 1 million enterprise areas) by 2025. It would construct within the vary of three.5 million to 4 million areas per yr within the coming years to hit that mark. AT&T additionally expects to spend $3 billion to $4 billion per yr to meet its fiber buildout mission.
“To us, fiber is foundational to our whole community. Wherever fiber goes, wi-fi follows,” Jeff McElfresh, CEO of AT&T Communications, mentioned.
McElfresh is assured that AT&T has the heft and offers in place to execute on the plan within the face of provide chain constraints and growing demand and prices for labor.
“We’re a really giant fiber overbuilder,” he mentioned. “We have got scale and we have carried out it earlier than. That scale interprets to issues like provide chain agreements which are lengthy in tenure and have actually good protections for each us and our suppliers.”
In tandem with the aggressive fiber buildout, the corporate expects broadband income to develop by 6% or extra in 2022, and within the mid-to-high single-digit vary in 2023. Whole annual capital bills are poised to hit $24 billion in 2022 and 2023, up from $20.1 billion in 2021.
McElfresh outlined the info development the corporate expects in coming years that can benefit from fiber-level speeds. Whereas client knowledge consumption has reached the neighborhood of 0.9 terabytes (TB) immediately, the corporate expects that to climb to 4.6 TB by 2025. AT&T expects to see huge positive factors in its small- and medium-sized (SMB) and enterprise segments. It additionally anticipated that the common variety of gadgets related to the house community will triple, to about 40, by 2025.
AT&T CEO John Stankey signaled that the corporate expects to play a big position in authorities subsidy program bidding that is targeted on bringing broadband to underserved and unserved areas. AT&T is working with coverage makers to assist ease its participation in these processes, and has stood up an inside group that’s exploring alternatives, he mentioned.
“We have now acquired a company and a mindset
to achieve success in flattening a few of these funds,” Stankey mentioned, noting that AT&T has not constructed any of that exercise into its steerage.
Killing copper
AT&T additionally introduced an accelerated plan to show down and decommission its legacy copper community. McElfresh mentioned the corporate expects to scale back its copper footprint by 50% by 2025. This yr’s tempo represents a 10x improve versus 2021, and the general copper program will attain a peak by 2024, he mentioned.
“In doing so, we’re rationalizing a value base of $6 billion,” McElfresh mentioned. “This system is within the early days of gaining scale, and we’re attending to the purpose the place the price of financial savings are materializing.” Thus far, AT&T has already decommissioned over 900,000 community parts on its copper community, and seen a 16% discount in copper upkeep hassle ticket repairs.
‘We’re not against mounted wi-fi’ in sure segments of the market, John Stankey, AT&T’s CEO, mentioned.
(Supply: Reuters/Alamy Inventory Photograph)
The copper sundown plan will cowl tens of millions of areas, and would possibly think about some authorities subsidy funding. AT&T, which has made its regulatory filings for the copper infrastructure unwinding, will even attempt to save or preserve DSL subs (AT&T ended 2021 with simply 315,000 DSL subs) utilizing different merchandise. AT&T will use mounted wi-fi “in lots of situations” in legacy copper areas the place total bandwidth demand is comparatively low, McElfresh mentioned.
AT&T’s use of mounted wi-fi for residence broadband is dwarfed by its use by Verizon and T-Cell, as the corporate believes it is higher off making use of its wi-fi spectral property for higher-value cell purposes.
“We’re not against mounted wi-fi,” John Stankey, AT&T’s CEO, mentioned. “I am positive there’s going to be segments of the market the place it’ll be acceptable and people are going to search out it to be sufficient.”
However so as to meet the bandwidth and latency wants of broadband purposes “nothing goes to high fiber,” he added, noting that AT&T is making a “long term wager” with its fiber buildout plan.
“We’re not trying to serve terabytes of month-to-month consumption over wi-fi,” McElfresh mentioned.
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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Gentle Studying
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