AT&T Rebrands And Expands Its Fibernet Service To 11 New Cities

By Sowmya Venkataramani - 06 Oct '16 13:14PM

Telecom major AT&T has renewed its focus on its gigabit fibernet service, announcing its expansion to 11 new locations. The company has also renamed its "ultra-fast internet" service from GigaPower to AT&T Fiber.

The locations which will now have the service are: Corpus Christi, Texas; Southeastern Tennessee and Knoxville, Tennessee; Wilmington, North Carolina; Northeast Mississippi and Biloxi-Gulfport, Mississippi; Lafayette, Louisiana; Central Kentucky; Columbus, Georgia; and Gainesville and Panama City, Florida.

AT&T expansion comes even as rival Google has decided to slow down deployment of its fibernet service. According to a report in The Information, Google Fibre has failed to meet its targets set for subscriber base and Alphabet CEO Larry Page had asked the team size to be slashed to 500.

Google's service is currently available in eight urban areas across U.S with the latest one to join the list being the North Carolina Research Triangle region, where customer registrations recently opened up. The tech giant has also recently brought a wireless Internet service provider, Webpass, whose technology might be used to install the internet via wireless.

Increasing media consumption and demands of new gadgets have increased the need for high-speed internet connectivity.

"Customer demand for high-speed connectivity is exceeding even our high expectations. Today we're also introducing the AT&T Fiber umbrella brand, which lets us bring ultra-fast internet to even more residential and business customers through a mix of the latest network technologies," said David Christophe AT&T Chief Marketing Officer for AT&T Entertainment Group.

AT&T has said that by end of 2016 it will be servicing 45 metro areas, with 29 of them already active. The cities announced in the latest round of expansion are likely to see the service only in 2017.

The company has said it is on track to deploy its service in 12.5 million customer locations by 2019 which is target imposed on it by the Federal Communications Commission during its acquisition of DirectTV.

At&T's service is currently available across 3 million homes, apartment complexes and businesses.

The infrastructure for developing fibrenet has proven to be an expensive proposition. AT&T has announced a new initiative 'Project Airgig' that will use plastic equipment on existing utility poles to provide the internet, testing for which starts in 2017.