AT&T will spend $14 billion on broadband expansion project
BY PETER SVENSSON Associated Press
Thursday, November 08, 2012
11/08/12 at 3:24 AM
NEW YORK - Many homes in AT&T Inc.'s local-phone service areas will see the company becoming more competitive with cable for broadband service under a new $14 billion investment plan the company revealed Wednesday. But in more outlying areas, the company will start shifting customers from regular phone lines to wireless service.
Like other phone companies, AT&T is having a hard time competing with cable broadband in much of its service area, because regular "DSL" broadband is now much slower than what cable companies offer. After reviewing its options, AT&T concluded that it won't sell off phone lines in outlying areas like Verizon Communications Inc. did. Instead, it will pursue a split strategy of upgrading some areas to higher speeds and abandoning phone lines in less dense areas in favor of wireless.
AT&T already sells a "wireless home phone" box into which buyers can plug a regular home phone. It then relays the signal wirelessly to an AT&T tower.
To help shift households to wireless, AT&T said it plans to build out its 4G LTE wireless network to cover 300 million people, up from the 250 million people it had initially planned to cover. Of the $14 billion investment, $8 billion will go to the wireless network.
Data speeds on 4G LTE are often faster than DSL and can be comparable to cable, but because AT&T has limited space on the airwaves, it imposes caps on monthly data usage that are much lower than those for wired broadband. That means customers who replace wired broadband with wireless will find it expensive to use data-intensive services like TV-quality streaming video.
Not all of the $14 billion represents an increase over AT&T's regular $19 billion to $20 billion in annual capital spending. The company expects to spend roughly $22 billion a year for the next three years, it said, before returning to more normal levels.
Still, some investors many not be happy about the plan to invest more in the wired operations, which are only marginally profitable.
Speaking to investors in New York, AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said the investments in wired and wireless infrastructure would be "mutually supportive," with faster lines helping to serve cell towers.
Dallas-based AT&T is the country's largest wired phone company, serving 33 million traditional phone lines in 22 states. It's the second-largest wireless carrier, after Verizon Wireless.
To compete with cable broadband, phone companies have made expensive upgrades of their lines to replace them with optical fiber for at least part of their run. AT&T calls this upgraded DSL "U-Verse" and uses it to provide TV services in addition to broadband.
Original Print Headline: AT&T expands reach
Associated Images:
An AT&T crew prepares a cable for installation in Los Angeles. AT&T Inc. said Wednesday it plans to make its U-Verse cable service available to 33 million homes, up from 24.5 million. Bloomberg file
|
