AT&T to expand gigabit service to seven more metro areas

AT&T plans to expand its U-verse with GigaPower to more than 24 cities in seven major metro areas. The service can provide Internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second, and is available in a growing number of areas across the country since 2013.

Most recently, AT&T delivered on a promise it made to wire Durham, NC with the service. Since AT&T didn’t previously service the Durham, NC, the company had to design and build a new network to support the deployment. Before that, the company announced in December that it would extend its GigaPower network to Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Winston-Salem, NC. GigaPower is also available in San Jose, Calif.; Chicago, Ill.; Dallas, Austin, and Houston, Texas; and Miami, Fla.

AT&T plans to bring GigaPower fiber to 14 million customer locations, including the 12.5 million  it committed to as part of the AT&T-DirecTV transaction. In his statement recommending the transaction, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler explained that AT&T’s commitment to build its fiber network will benefit consumers:

An order recommending that the AT&T/DirecTV transaction be approved with conditions has circulated to the Commissioners. The proposed order outlines a number of conditions that will directly benefit consumers by bringing more competition to the broadband marketplace. If the conditions are approved by my colleagues, 12.5 million customer locations will have access to a competitive high-speed fiber connection. This additional build-out is about 10 times the size of AT&T’s current fiber-to-the-premise deployment, increases the entire nation’s residential fiber build by more than 40 percent, and more than triples the number of metropolitan areas AT&T has announced plans to serve.

Stream and Download Faster from More Locations (AT&T Consumer Blog, Aug. 31, 2015)

AT&T brings its high-speed Internet to Durham, NC (Speed Matters, July 25, 2015)

AT&T Completes Acquisition of DIRECTV (AT&T Newsroom, July 24, 2015)