The Main Points From AT&T’s Shareholder Day For 5G

AT&T’s mid-band 5G rollout lags behind other Verizon and T-Mobile.

AT&T executives identified that the company expects to do is provide mid-band 5G interconnection to 70 million people over the course of this year. AT&T intends to boost that amount to 200 billion at the end of 2023. AT&T stated that it anticipates beginning deploying 80MHz of mid-band spectrum this year, with plans to increase that one to 120MHz by the close of 2023.

AT&T paid a total of $36 billion for its mid-band licensing in two recent FCC spectrum auctions. The mid-band spectrum is crucial for 5G since it allows for fast connections as well as broad spatial coverage areas. Furthermore, the quantity of mid-band spectrum utilized by contractors is critical – a more spectral range directly corresponds to greater speeds and greater network capacity.

AT&T stated that its capital spending in 2022 would total $24 billion, with $5 billion going toward the deployment of the 5G spectrum. In 2023, the company expects to spend approximately the same number on capital spending.

However, it is now evident that AT&T lags behind its competitors in the mid-band. Verizon, for example, recently stated that it anticipates covering 175 million people with 60MHz of mid-band spectrum.

AT&T did not mm-wave 5G.

During referring to the event, AT&T authorities did not refer to the high-band, millimeter wave (mmWave) flavor of 5G.

However, this is not surprising given that Apple officially launched the latest phone which does not endorse mmWave 5G in any way T-Mobile, on the other hand, recently updated its perspective of the 5G spectral range “layer cake” to delete a focus on mmWave.

Verizon is the only provider in the United States that is forcibly going to deploy mmWave. The company lost 2021 with approximately 30,000 mmWave transmitting sites, and it pledged that percentage would grow inside the months and years ahead.

We see millimeter ripple as a point of difference, Verizon CTO Kyle Affliction said at a holder day.

AT&T persists to be completely disinterested in FWA.

Despite having approximately the same number of low-band and mid-band spectral responses as Verizon, AT&T does not intend to undertake the large-scale implementation of repaired wireless access (FWA) advanced technologies.

AT&T CEO John Stankey stated, “We’re not opposed to wireless broadband.” According to FierceWireless, AT&T has over 500,000 wireless broadband customers, with roughly 130,000 classed as corporate customers.