AT&T plans to connect more than 400,000 locations with fixed wireless this year
AT&T said that it has kicked off fixed wireless Internet services for rural and underserved areas in Georgia, with a plan to expand to another 17 states this year and serve more than 400,000 locations by the end of 2017.
The move is part of its Connect America Fund commitment to the Federal Communications Commission, under which 10 operators including AT&T were awarded $1.5 billion in 2015 to increase connectivity options in rural or low-income areas. Under the terms of the program, operators must provide speeds of at least 10 megabits per second and AT&T said that it will meet that level of service from cellular towers with an LTE-based service that reaches in-home Wi-Fi routers. AT&T received $427 million under the Connect America program.
After starting in Georgia, AT&T plans to expand the fixed wireless services to Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. It expects to connect more than 67,000 locations in Georgia, and more than 1.1 million locations nationwide, by 2020.
The available plan for the fixed wireless includes 160 GB of data.
Verizon launches gigabit Fios
Verizon launched a new Fios Gigabit Connection service this week, taking advantage of higher-than-expected network speeds for its Fios Instant Internet to create a service that approaches gigabit speeds. Verizon said that after launching its Fios Instant Internet earlier this year, “Verizon’s network performance exceeded expectations as Instant Internet customers regularly saw actual speeds well over the advertised 750 Mbps/750 Mbps. Verizon has since fine-tuned the service with new firmware and diagnostic tools to increase performance even more. The result is Fios Gigabit Connection service,” which Verizon said has download speeds up to 940 Mbps and upload speeds up to 880 Mbps.
Verizon is pricing the service at $69.99 a month as a standalone option and $79.99 as part of a triple-play bundle ordered online. Comparatively, it offers standalone 50 Mbps service for $39.99 a month.
Verizon said that the gigabit service is available to more than 8 million homes in the Northeast, including parts of Massachusetts, Rohde Island, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Virginia and Washington, D.C. It’s more than a 1 million-home-increase from the Instant Internet offering, Verizon noted, with expansion of its higher speeds into Washington, D.C and Providence, R.I for the first time.
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