AT&T now offers its Internet Air service in nearly 60 locations
AT&T has substantially expanded the eligible service areas for its A&T Internet Air Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) service, and now serves parts of 59 markets, up from 35 at the end of the year.
The company announced an additional 26 Internet Air markets this week. Those markets include:
-In California: San Diego and Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo.
-In Texas: Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Sherman, Victoria, Beaumont-Port Arthur and Harlingen-Weslaco-Brownsville-McAllen.
-In Florida: Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Panama City and Ft. Myers-Naples and West Palm Beach-Fort Pierce.
In North Carolina: Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham.
In Oklahoma: Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Ada.
In New York: Buffalo and Syracuse.
-Baltimore, MD
-Indianapolis, IN
-Little Rock-Pine Bluff, AR
-Thomasville, GA
AT&T CEO John Stankey has emphasized that while AT&T intends to use FWA as a tool in specific circumstances, that the carrier’s focus remains on 5G and fiber. Speaking about AT&T Internet Air on the company’s most recent quarterly call, he said: “I don’t expect that we are going to be pushing the product in the same way that some others in the market are pushing it today. We’ve made a conscious choice as a company that we want to dedicate capital to investing in fiber, which we believe is a more sustainable, long-term means to deal with stationary and fixed broadband needs.
“It doesn’t mean that we don’t think that fixed wireless serves some segment of the market. It does,” he continued. “It serves certain types of circumstances in the consumer base. It serves certain types of circumstances in the business base. And we will take advantage of those certain circumstances.”
However, Stankey also said that AT&T would “lean into” serving such small businesses with FWA this year, and also to some extent in the consumer segment, depending on its spectrum profile in a given geographic market. He also pointed out that AT&T is using Internet Air “very, very actively” as it turns down its legacy copper network footprint, to offer an alternative service so that customers remain with the company.
“We’ve already rolled out AT&T Internet Air to existing copper-based customers with great success,” wrote Erin Scarborough, AT&T’s president of broadband and connectivity initiatives, in an updated blog post on Internet Air. “As we begin to scale, we are hyper-focused on selecting locations with enough wireless coverage and capacity to deliver not only a great in-home experience, but also maintain a top-notch wireless service for our existing mobile users.”
AT&T reported having 93,000 FWA customers as of the end of 2023.
