AT&T ‘Promises’ To Bring 1 Gbps To Austin after Google’s Official Announcement

Google Fiber’s implementation in Austin was recently announced, but AT&T has decided to follow Google with the 1 Gbps connection PR bandwagon. AT&T has put up their press release where they say that they are prepared to offer advanced fiber optic which can provide 1 Gbps.

AT&T further added the following statement “Today, AT&T announced that in conjunction with its previously announced Project VIP expansion of broadband access, it is prepared to build an advanced fiber optic infrastructure in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.”

One will be skeptical, but one would expect at the very least that AT&T may offer few FTTH (Fiber to the home) to a selected number of users- or maybe do offer actual fiber to many of its home users, but it won’t be surprising if the network provider decides to cap these lines as AT&T is well-known to do for a very long time. There’s a questionable remark by the company on the press release where it said that upgrades are “not expected to materially alter AT&T’s anticipated 2013 capital expenditures.” Its not possible to have a network infrastructure with a fiber unless one spends money, therefore this should be some form of expenditure.

However AT&T so far has plans which has problems to keep up with cable, let alone fiber. Its been found that AT&T is barely able to provide 5 Mbps connection to many of their customers. To add further, AT&T is mostly concentrating on wireless internet access and large investor returns. So many would see this attempt by AT&T and their promise to provide 1 Gbps fiber connection at the time when Google is offering the same nothing more than hitch-hiking Google’s thunder and PR impact, which could affect AT&T’s DSL customers .

Source: DSL Reports