AT&T extends FTTH network to University of Texas student housing development

AT&T (NYSE: T) has struck an agreement with The Villas whereby the telco will offer its GigaPower fiber to the premises (FTTP) service for a new for University of Texas student housing development in Austin, Texas.

Bringing the GigaPower service to this new development makes sense as it is being built with a number of high-tech amenities, such as built-in home automation and in-wall touch screens in all apartments.

The service provider initially launched U-verse with GigaPower in Austin in December 2013, with speeds of up to 300 megabits per second (Mbps)--and plans to increase speeds to up to 1 Gbps this year.  

Austin has been a key market for GigaPower. The telco said that people in the city "consume data at rates 15 percent to 20 percent higher than the average AT&T U-verse user."

Outside of Austin, the service provider has intimated that it would consider bringing FTTP to other markets provided it can get streamlined permitting approvals from local communities to get access to necessary rights of way (ROWs) along public streets and utility poles to lay fiber and install related network electronics.

For more:
- see the release

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