AT&T CEO: Fiber Can't Be Beat

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2024 – Alternative internet technologies like satellite will have a role, but fiber is the technology that will win the battle for online subscribers, AT&T CEO John Stankey said Tuesday.

"Our belief is fiber ultimately wins. It's destined to be nearly ubiquitous because the physics say it will win. At the end of the day, fiber has better performance upstream, downstream, latency, resiliency, scalability, and marginal cost, and it will win," Stankey said.

Stankey's comments came during AT&T's Analyst & Investor Day held at AT&T Stadium, home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas.

Stankey saw a mostly a niche role for satellite internet providers like Starlink.

"Satellites are going to play a role. They're going to be very important for picking up coverage in areas," Stankey said.

Stankey said the company will have 29 million fiber locations passed by the end of 2024, rising to about 50 million by the end of 2029.

About 15 million of the new passings will be purely AT&T fiber builds.

"To get to the additional five million plus locations, we intend to expand our Gigapower and commercial open access network relationships to reach more than five million locations. That gets us to a total of 50 million plus," AT&T Chief Operating Officer Jeff McElfresh said.

Gigapower is a joint venture between AT&T and BlackRock to deploy a commercial, wholesale open-access fiber network delivering multigigabit speeds to an initial 1.5 million customer locations, with AT&T as its anchor tenant.