A growing AT&T fixed wireless footprint added 8 states beyond the launch state of Georgia, now reaching 70K locations in 9 states. This fixed wireless service is funded in part by the FCC’s Connect America Fund, and is used across AT&T’s rural footprint.
The new states include Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Eighteen additional states are planned to join this AT&T fixed wireless footprint by then end of 2017, according to the company.
“We’re committed to connect hard-to-reach locations to the internet,” said Cheryl Choy, vice president, wired voice and internet products at AT&T in a press release. “We’re excited to bring this service to even more underserved locations.”
AT&T Fixed Wireless Details
AT&T is using licensed WCS (Band 30) 2.3 GHz spectrum for the fixed wireless service. It delivers download speeds of at least 10 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 1 Mbps, according to the company, just meeting FCC requirements for price cap carrier participation in the CAF.
“Although we are using a largely separate network from our current Mobility infrastructure for this service, the service is running off of existing LTE cell towers,” an AT&T spokesperson tells Telecompetitor. “The fixed wireless antenna on the subscriber’s house is pointed directly at that cell tower.”
The spokesperson declined to offer current subscriber counts for the service. Service just launched in April of this year in Georgia.
AT&T offers a variety of pricing schemes for this service, with stand-alone service priced at $60 per month with a one year contract, and $70 month thereafter. If bundled with either Directv or AT&T wireless, the contracted monthly price drops to $50 (or $60 without a contract).
There are no equipment fees, but there is a $99 installation fee. That fee is waived if purchased with Directv. In that situation, our assumption is both services are installed at the same time.
There are also monthly caps for broadband usage. Each plan starts with a monthly allowance for 160 GBs. Additional 50 GB buckets are charged at $10 per month with a $200/month maximum.
AT&T eventually plans to reach 400,000 locations by the end of 2017 and 1.1 million locations by 2020.
This would be a great new service here in Oklahoma, but since AT&T has lots of rural sites all across the state stuck with "4G"/HSPA service instead of LTE, they cannot deploy it here any time soon. A lot of these HSPA sites were only upgraded to that because of the GSM shutdown last year, they previously had only 2G/EDGE service even though AT&T had launched 3G around the country way back in 2006. These sites were left to rot at 2G/EDGE for 11 years. Why weren't the sites upgraded in the GSM shutdown not upgraded to LTE? In this county, 3 of AT&T's 6 sites do not have LTE.
I hope they get on this quick and this isn't a tease. I am sick of satellite.
I'm in rural Alabama…and I despise what AT&T is doing to us. Cell tower is a mile away…do we have any hint of this happening? No. Does the fiber feed coming to the DSLAM where I get DSL come under my driveway? Yes…
I live directly next-door to the DSLAM for my area. Throw a rock and I'd hit the building…
Does the fiber run back under my driveway going to that cell tower a mile away? Yes. So 2 48-pair fiber lines run under my driveway…and none of that fiber can be offered for customer use (because it's not on the customer side…it's on the distribution side)
Does AT&T cap their DSL customers at 150gb a month, then charge them $10 per 50gb over that? Yes. What if you keep a count on your use via your router, and you don't go over according to your router, but according to AT&T, you're going over by 150gb/month or more? Does it work to call in a tell them? No. They keep charging you extra.
I have 2 DSL lines in my house because AT&T won't give us anything better than 6mbps. And the upload speed on the 6meg tier is ATROCIOUS…0.5mbps…
Might as well not even have an upload speed..
AT&T is the most greedy, inept, and selfish company that I've ever dealt with. I hope and pray for the day that 1)they go bankrupt…or 2) we actually have a choice and can get very far away from the AT&T name forever.