AT&T is playing a long game in looking at infrastructure investments, says Jeff McLefresh, COO of AT&T — and that doesn’t include leading with fixed wireless access as an offer to go for home and business broadband.
McElfresh emphasized that 5G and fiber are AT & T’s core business, and that it focuses on attracting and retaining high-value customers যা which is how FWA thinks about it.
AT&T executives have previously discussed the prospect of a continued and massive increase in their data traffic that would require a fiber-based network, whatever.
“The reason for our ‘lead offer’ approach, if you will, is that we know that the physics of fixed wireless cannot meet the needs of a family looking for, or a business looking for high-quality, premium. Broadband connectivity, ”McElfresh said in a comment Bank of America C-Suite TMT 2022 Virtual Event. “What we mean by that is physics. It’s multi-gig symmetrical, ”he continued. “Uplink is becoming a much more important component to your broadband experience, and the only technology that is seamless and comprehensive and provides a great experience is a fiber-fed network.
“We can serve the end-mile customer with a wireless offer or wireless solution, but it’s not going to perform more than a direct fiber connection,” McElfresh said.
He followed: “We’re not against fixed wireless, it’s not just our main offer,” noting that AT&T has “hundreds of thousands” of FWA customers and business customers, especially through the Connect America Fund II program where federal dollar subsidy services Extension. But from its use of these services and its expectations for future data traffic growth, he added, “we know that wireless architecture is going to lower expectations over time” and its deployment versus fiber has become a question of a “timing game.” AT&T thinks this is creating more futures-proof infrastructure bets.
Is FWA a tool to use on AT&T’s network today? Yes, McLefresh says, but the operator wants to target specific customer groups that do not have fiber access, in areas where it does not want to place fiber, or in areas where it relocates customers. Off Legacy Copper Network and FWA will perform better than DSL or other low-speed wired offers. While AT&T will follow suit and continue to experiment with the use of FWA, he said, “But this is not the majority of our growth agenda. It’s not part of our revenue equation. ”
T-Mobile was asked if AT&T was lagging behind the US in FWA, which has the ability to offer both mobile and home internet services and its main focus on setting up midband spectrum holding at 2.5 GHz for Verizon’s huge C-band deployment. Said the beginning. Push, which includes increasing the availability of its home broadband services, has again returned to the theme of providing high-value customer service and gaining ROI on investment.
“If you look at the fixed profiles of fixed wireless – revenue vs. amount of data – we did not purchase premium midband spectrum to capture it with this type of customer unit,” McLefresh responded. He noted that in his years with AT&T, he conducted a “very large” FWA operation in Latin America and called the FWA the “temporary stop-gap best.”
If there is only one wireless network to work with AT&T, and no large-scale and growing fiber network, the company can have no choice but to “get excited.” [our] Wireless spectrum is going to grow my business, ”he added. “But at AT&T, we’re not limited to that. The fact that we have two platforms that we can enhance, it gives us the ability to make smart decisions according to geography, not playing for a quarter or a year, playing long games. ”
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