AT&T’s Gigapower joint venture with investment firm Black Rock, announced in December, closed today, and the partners took the opportunity to reveal the next markets where they plan to deploy fiber networks.
“In addition to Las Vegas, Gigapower now expects to expand beyond its previously announced fiber deployment in Mesa, to the Chandler and Gilbert areas of Arizona,” said AT&T and Black Rock in a press release. “Gigapower also plans to build fiber in parts of Northeastern Pennsylvania (including Wilkes-Barre and Scranton) as well as parts of Alabama and Florida that are outside AT&T’s current service areas.”
When plans for Gigapower were announced, the partners said they planned to make fiber broadband service available to 1.5 million customer locations and that they would use an open access approach in which other service providers could pay to use the network.
Subsequently, AT&T CEO John Stankey said Gigapower’s build target could increase in the future if the first 12 to 18 months are successful.
Plans also call for AT&T to be an anchor tenant on the networks.
“Recently our first wholesale customer, AT&T, activated end-user customers on the Gigapower fiber network in Mesa, and that is just the beginning,” said Gigapower CEO Bill Hogg, in today’s release. “We have big plans to deploy multi-gig fiber to many more cities across our country. Our partnerships with communities like Las Vegas and others are essential to building our fiber network and creating a commercial wholesale open access platform that will benefit consumers and businesses across the U.S.”
In today’s release, Stankey said BlackRock is “one of the world’s foremost investors in infrastructure.”
He also noted that “the demand for high-speed connectivity is unprecedented.”
Previously he said that the joint venture will enable AT&T to quickly build if it determines that it needs scale and needs to move faster.
