Wednesday, May 06, 2020

AT&T should add residential FTTP service where it has installed fiber

It’s Hard to Like AT&T | POTs and PANs: Over the last year, I’ve said some nice things about AT&T. It was nice to see AT&T wholeheartedly embrace their commitment to build fiber past 12 million homes as they had promised as part of the conditions of buying DirecTV. In the past, they might have shrugged that obligation off and faked it, but they’ve brought fiber to pockets of residential neighborhoods all over the country. It seemed that they were unenthusiastic about this requirement at first, but eventually embraced when somebody at the company realized that new fiber could be profitable.
Doug Dawson’s right. It is indeed good to see badly outdated legacy copper plant being modernized to fiber to the prem (FTTP) infrastructure by one of the nation’s biggest telcos. It’s at least a decade overdue. But the downside it’s just a few discrete residential “pockets” as Dawson points out amid recent indications from AT&T that it will be dialing back its landline capital expenditures.



Moreover, in parts of AT&T’s service territory, services on these new fiber installs are being limited to enterprise customers willing and able to afford rates at hundreds of dollars per month and higher. Nearby residences that could be served by drops from the new fiber are relegated to DSL over aging copper twisted pair. Or in some cases, asymmetric 10/1Mbps fixed wireless service in exurban areas that competes for limited mobile bandwidth since it runs on top of mobile wireless infrastructure.

These exurbs typically have population densities of more than 200 people per square mile, where fixed wireless and limited fiber to the home are best suited, according to a Microsoft-sponsored study by the Boston Consulting Group. That study was done in 2017. The appetite for residential bandwidth has increased since then. And it’s likely spiked higher in recent weeks as more people work, study and get medical attention at home during the SARS-CoV-2 contagion, using videoconferencing that requires the symmetrical connectivity fiber enables. Those bandwidth intensive activities are likely to persist to a greater degree after the pandemic ends than they did before.

The vast majority of residential customers and home office and teleworkers are not going to be willing or able to afford paying several hundred dollars a month for business class service offerings. AT&T should consider adding residential service at accessible residential rates in areas where it has already has installed fiber or it’s in the works.

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