AT&T spends $675M in Nevada, increases U-verse, business fiber reach

AT&T (NYSE: T) continues to progress with its Project VIP initiative, announcing that it invested $675 million in its wireline and wireless networks in Nevada between 2011 and 2013 to enhance its residential U-verse and next-gen business services.

The service provider said that it expanded the reach of its U-verse Internet and video services in Nevada to more than 4,000 new customer locations and fiber-based services to 685 business locations.

A key focus for U-verse has been to increase speeds. Along with California, Nevada was one of the first markets where AT&T introduced its 45 Mbps service option. Over the past year it has expanded the reach of its 45 Mbps U-verse broadband option to 40 additional markets.

Expanding its metro fiber network into more buildings comes at a time when cable operators are expanding the reach of their own metro fiber networks.

Although they lack the national and international reach of AT&T, cable operators such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Cox and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) continue to expand the availability of next-gen services like Ethernet with small and medium sized businesses that have often been ignored by larger incumbent providers.

Both U-verse and fiber-based services were key revenue drivers in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Fourth-quarter U-verse revenues rose 27.9 percent year-over-year and were up 7.0 percent sequentially over the third quarter of 2013 as subscribers topped the 10.7 million mark. The telco added 630,000 new net U-verse broadband and 194,000 U-verse TV subscribers in the fourth quarter, ending the period with a total of 5.5 million and 10.4 million subscribers, respectively.

No less impressive was next-gen business services. Similar to its Bell brethren, declines in legacy services such as ATM and Frame Relay were partially offset by what AT&T said was "double-digit" growth in strategic business services. Next-gen services such as VPN, Ethernet, cloud and hosting grew 17.4 percent over the fourth quarter of 2012.

For more:
- see the release

Special report: AT&T's $14B Project VIP: breaking out the business service, U-verse numbers

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