AT&T challenges Comcast, Altice, others as it expands to Mississippi, Louisiana businesses

AT&T (NYSE: T) announced it is bringing gigabit internet speeds to businesses in Mississippi and Louisiana as its expands the reach of its AT&T Business Fiber service that offers speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

"As a result of the pro-investment policies that have been enacted at the state and local levels across Mississippi, AT&T has been able to significantly expand its fiber footprint, bringing more advanced services to our Mississippi customers," said Mayo Flynt, president of AT&T Mississippi, in a release from the company. "And with AT&T Business Fiber being deployed to many multi-tenant office buildings across the state, we are quickly expanding the number of businesses in urban and rural areas alike that have access to Gigabit connections."

AT&T said it has invested more than $875 million in its Mississippi wireless and wireline networks from 2013 through 2015. The company said it now covers 10,500 business customer locations in Mississippi, and services roughly 55 multi-tenant office buildings in the state.

As for Louisiana, AT&T said it has invested more than $1 billion in its wireless and wireline networks from 2013 through 2015 in the state. The company said it covers 230 multi-tenant office buildings with AT&T Business Fiber in Louisiana.

AT&T will run up against Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) in the region, as well as Altice's Suddenlink. France's Altice last year closed its $9.1 billion purchase of a 70 percent stake in Suddenlink, and earlier this year the company closed its $17.7 billion purchase of Cablevision.

Spurred by the likes of Comcast, Google Fiber (NASDAQ: GOOG) and others -- and buoyed by its acquisition of DirecTV -- AT&T has been working to expand its own fiber footprint. The company said it now covers over 1 million incremental business customer locations in the United States.

AT&T's focus on business customers in Mississippi and Louisiana is noteworthy considering Google Fiber just this week announced its services are now for sale to businesses with specific business pricing.

For more:
- see these two releases

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