Execs say AT&T's U-verse locations are heading for 100Mbit/s, with big wireline improvements reaching its other broadband customers, too

Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief

January 7, 2013

2 Min Read
AT&T's Broadband Bravado

9:30 AM -- LAS VEGAS -- 2013 International CES -- The AT&T Inc. Developer Summit yesterday did not disappoint, and in many ways, it helped me answer the question: Where is AT&T's network going next? Of particular interest to me were the wireline network improvements noted by John Donovan, the former CTO of AT&T. Donovan's title these days is Senior Executive Vice President of AT&T Technology and Network Operations, AT&T Inc. He hopped in a car and left the Palms hotel right after the keynote session Monday morning. I was hoping to get a business card from him to see how large the cards were, given all the verbiage. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. The network ... What Donovan was clear about was that AT&T is bringing IP broadband services to more people as part of its Project Velocity IP, or Project VIP -- a menu of $15 billion worth of wireline and wireless improvements coming between now and 2015. When discussing DSLAM and wireline technologies, Donovan said: "With our plant technology advancements, 90 percent of our U-verse customer locations will have the capability to receive what we project to be 75 Mbit/s. And 75 percent will have the capability to receive up to 100 Mbit/s. "And almost 80 percent of the IP DSLAM customer locations will have the capability to receive 45 Mbit/s, with about half of those [customers] having the capability to receive up to 75 Mbit/s." He added that, in all, "75 percent of AT&T customer locations will have access to either U-verse or IP DSLAMs." Also, he reiterated the deadline, saying that AT&T will "essentially complete this IP broadband build by the end of 2015." Later, during a meeting, Jeff Weber, AT&T's VP of U-verse and Video Products, noted that AT&T already offers 35 Mbit/s to some U-verse customers today. "Our roadmap for broadband is really, really robust," he tells Light Reading. At one point I thought AT&T would run out of road by having U-verse deployed on anything less than an all-fiber network. Donovan and Weber are making the case that AT&T has plenty of technology in its own network, by taking advantage of new video compression techniques, to keep that road stretching out a long, long way. — Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Phil Harvey

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Phil Harvey has been a Light Reading writer and editor for more than 18 years combined. He began his second tour as the site's chief editor in April 2020.

His interest in speed and scale means he often covers optical networking and the foundational technologies powering the modern Internet.

Harvey covered networking, Internet infrastructure and dot-com mania in the late 90s for Silicon Valley magazines like UPSIDE and Red Herring before joining Light Reading (for the first time) in late 2000.

After moving to the Republic of Texas, Harvey spent eight years as a contributing tech writer for D CEO magazine, producing columns about tech advances in everything from supercomputing to cellphone recycling.

Harvey is an avid photographer and camera collector – if you accept that compulsive shopping and "collecting" are the same.

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