It’s still early innings for AT&T’s multi-gig service plans, but one operator executive told Fierce it is already noticing some interesting trends among customers who have taken the faster speeds.
AT&T rolled out two new multi-gig fiber broadband tiers late last month, including symmetrical 2-gig and 5-gig offerings. Speaking during Fierce’s Wi-Fi Summit virtual event this week, AT&T VP of Broadband Technology Management Josh Goodell said the number of connected devices in homes that have adopted one of these plans has jumped by 20% to 30%. Bandwidth consumption has also gone up as one might expect, but Goodell noted uplink consumption in particular has jumped 3x among these users.
That statistic is “super interesting to me and just shows you the value of not just these speeds but the fact that they’re symmetrical,” he said.
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Goodell pointed to the rollout of multi-gig service tiers as evidence of work AT&T is doing on the WAN side of the network to improve the customer experience. On the LAN side, he noted homes and businesses really need “top shelf” equipment to take advantage of those speeds and said the gear AT&T is rolling out to customers today is already multi-gig capable.
In terms of what actual speeds customers taking its 2-gig and 5-gig plans can expect, Goodell said that depends both on how they’re connecting and what kind of device they’re connecting with.
“The physical connected devices, so think like TVs or PCs, they’re gonna get 5-gig symmetrical if they’ve got the 5-gig service or 2-gig symmetrical if they’ve got the 2-gig service,” he explained. “If they’re connecting over Wi-Fi, they’re going to get speeds well over a gig.”
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During the session, Goodell also discussed the importance of Wi-Fi to AT&T’s vision of delivering ubiquitous connectivity as well as its views on Wi-Fi 6E and the 6GHz band. To view the full keynote, click here.