John Donovan told investors they are now marketing fiber to 9M locations and he
expects that this time next year to reach 14M locations. ... We're doing very well in our fiber markets, including a 246,000 net increase in subs on our fiber network in the second quarter.
Customers are buying.
Broadband penetration in the fiber footprint continues to be significantly higher than in AT&T’s non-fiber footprint and is nearly 50% in locations marketed to for more than 30 months
5M fiber homes passed in one year would be the fastest ever achieved in the West, although China now has 328M homes directly connected to fiber.
Telefonica once did 4M and Verizon peaked at 3M. CEO Randall Stephenson was CFO in 2004 when he killed AT&T's plan to do fiber home, jointly developed with Verizon. It would have been like FIOS but bigger. He didn't like the numbers.Five years ago, Randall decided fiber costs have come down enough it was time to build. 50+% of the U.S. can now get gigabit cable and that will soon be over 80%.
Customers continue to move up broadband speed tiers. About 68% of all IP broadband customers have purchased speed tiers between 18 megabits and 1 gigabit. Half of all broadband subscribers on AT&T’s fiber network have speeds of 100 megabits or more. Customers with speeds of 100 megabits or faster have more than doubled year over year.
China is now at 328M