Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on June 14, 2013 at 11:32 am
Please attribute the following statement to Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President, External and Legislative Affairs:
“Today’s announcement by the White House is important not just for the initiatives it lays out, but for the clear policy direction it sets. We commend the White House for recognizing the enormous progress in US broadband deployment, wireless in particular, and for their commitment to meet the need for more spectrum so these investments can continue. In addition, the new White House report, “Four Years of Broadband Growth“, demonstrates factually the dramatic pace of broadband investment that is helping transform America– a success story that is undeniable, compelling, and continuing.
“At AT&T, we’ve been doing our part, investing nearly $80 billion in the US over the past four years. And, with the promise of supportive government policies that encourage the construction of broadband infrastructure, we’re prepared to continue investing over the next four years, helping bring America the world class broadband infrastructure our economy needs to compete in the 21st century.”
Read More 
Posted by: Joan Marsh on January 7, 2013 at 3:26 pm
In the midst of a prolonged and deep national recession, the U.S. wireless industry has generated billions of dollars of investment capital, produced millions of jobs, and spawned a breathtaking array of innovative new consumer products and services. This wireless success story is due in no small measure to the Commission’s longstanding recognition that a light touch approach to wireless regulation best promotes competition, innovation and investment.
Not surprisingly, however, some wireless providers urge the Commission to abandon that approach in favor of blatantly skewed spectrum policies that are designed to tip the competitive scales in their own favor. For example, Sprint/Clearwire, which controls double the spectrum of any other carrier, contends that most of its own spectrum should continue to be excluded from the spectrum screen, while much of the spectrum held by Verizon and AT&T should be double-counted. T-Mobile, which chose to sit out the Commission’s 700 MHz auction entirely and to forego low band secondary market spectrum opportunities, now wants the Commission to adopt spectrum rules designed to guarantee its ability to catch up on the cheap. And the Rural Telecommunications Group (“RTG”) has asked for spectrum caps so draconian they would require AT&T and Verizon to undertake immediate divestitures – unless, of course, AT&T and Verizon “volunteer” to be yoked with RTG’s entire wish list of regulatory obligations that have no connection whatsoever to spectrum policy.
None of these proposals has the slightest merit. For example, while Sprint and Clearwire weakly argue that the bulk of Clearwire’s 2.5 GHz spectrum should continue to be excluded from the spectrum screen, these arguments are flatly inconsistent with these carriers’ claims regarding the value and utility of its spectrum in every venue but the FCC. And, even more importantly, they cannot be reconciled with the undeniable reality that the spectrum they want to exclude from the screen is today being used for mobile broadband services. Indeed, Sprint has made quite clear that it is buying the rest of Clearwire “to maximize the value of Clearwire’s 2.5 GHz spectrum and use it to increase Sprint’s network capacity.” These are inconvenient facts for Sprint and Clearwire which they blithely ignore in their comments.
Read More
Posted by: Bob Quinn on November 7, 2012 at 12:03 pm
This morning, we announced a very significant capital commitment to our broadband infrastructure. The net-net is that we are committing $14 Billion in capital to bring Internet broadband infrastructure – wireline and wireless – to more places over the next three years. As part of that commitment, we plan to expand our 4G LTE network by an additional 50 million consumers (based on population covered). And we plan to provide an additional 8.5 million customer locations with our award winning U-verse product that will directly compete with the cable incumbent’s voice, video and broadband offerings. As a result of these investments, millions of customer locations that have at best access only to legacy DSL services will have access to either U-verse or IP DSLAM technology.
In addition to that expansion, we are also committing capital to build 21st century fiber infrastructure to 50 percent of the Multi-Tenant buildings in our wireline service area, which will be capable of serving more than one million additional business customer locations.
We plan to invest on average about $22 billion in capital per year over the next three years. To build that additional infrastructure means that we will be buying 21st century broadband equipment, including laying new fiber and providing faster Internet services to a significant part of our service area. AT&T’s announcement is exactly the kind of infrastructure investment story that policymakers have been urging to create jobs in the United States. AT&T is stepping up to meet that challenge.
Read More
