AT&T is looking to push well beyond its fiber buildout commitment with the Federal Communications Commission to hit 14 million fiber to the premises customers by 2019, CFO John Stephens said in a Tuesday earnings call.
As one of the conditions of its DirecTV acquisition, AT&T struck a deal with the FCC to expand its fiber footprint to 12.5 million locations. Most recently, AT&T brought its fiber broadband services to Tulsa, following a rollout in the San Francisco area. All told AT&T expects to add two million locations to its fiber network this year. But looking down the line to that 2019 goal, Stephens reports the operator is on track to handily surpass the 12.5 million figure by some 1.5 million locations.
“We also have been making great headway with our fiber build. We have the largest fiber footprint in the country, and we are ahead of the plan to reach our 12.5 million new fiber customer locations FCC commitment by mid-2019,” Stephens notes. “In fact, by the time it’s all said and done, we could be looking at around 14 million fiber-to-the-prem customer locations.”
In addition to growing broadband subscriber figures, Stephens indicates fiber build is expected to have a positive impact on AT&T’s wireless business as it will increase opportunities for the operator to bundle its services together.
“On an out-of-footprint basis where we don’t have fiber, we’re seeing sub losses to competitors where they can bundle. We believe we’re going to, if you will, arrest that or address that situation as we continue to build out fiber,” Stephens reports. “Not only just the, if you will, 14 million or so fiber-to-the-prem locations we’ll get to, but as we mentioned, as we develop 5G wireless technologies that allows for efficient delivery of video over our wireless networks, we’ll be able to compete in that environment like no one else on a nationwide basis.”
During the second quarter, AT&T says it added 112,000 IP broadband subscribers and 8,000 total broadband customers. Over the past year, Stephens says the number of broadband subscribers on speeds of 18 Mbps or higher has increased by nearly 1.6 million.
More from AT&T’s second quarter earnings report can be found here.
