AT&T released a dribble of information about the 1 Gbps network it is building in Texas, specifically which neighborhoods in the city of Austin will be among the first to see the service.
AT&T said its fiber build, which it is calling GigaPower, will reach parts of central, northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast Austin and city neighborhoods like French Place, Mueller, Zilker and Onion Creek.
The company is adopting the same approach Google took in Kansas City to decide where to build. Rather than identify the most affluent neighborhoods itself and then run fiber to the premises (FTTP) there, AT&T (like Google) is letting the most affluent neighborhoods select themselves. AT&T encourages individuals to request the service in advance, and encourage their neighbors to do likewise.
“We’ve already received great input from thousands of Austinites eager for the fastest speeds,” said Dahna Hull, vice president and general manager, Austin, AT&T Services Inc. “These votes are helping us identify where the need for speed and advanced TV services is the greatest and will help guide our future GigaPower expansion plans.”
A month after announcing that Gigapower would be available in Austin in December, with an ongoing rollout in 2014, the company said it remains on schedule.
It also has not yet announced pricing for the service. AT&T did say that the initial maximum speed for the network would be 300 Mbps, and that subscribers to the 300 Mbps tier would automatically get a free boost to 1 Gbps when AT&T accelerates the network to those speeds, which the company said would be in 2014.
AT&T also said that U-verse with GigaPower customers will be supplied with the largest storage capacity DVR the company has available.
