AT&T's 30-Million Fiber Location Forecast Might be Too Low, According to its CEO

There might be a business case for AT&T to deploy fiber to more than the 30 million locations that the company aims to make fiber broadband available to by 2025, said AT&T CEO John Stankey. Defining the business model for fiber deployment may not be as clear cut as some might believe, Stankey suggested. Another impending development that could impact the fiber deployment business case, according to the CEO, is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed the Senate and will become law if adopted by the House and signed into law by President Biden. If that happens, Stankey said it will “change the landscape of the broadband business in this country. And it will also change my posture and point of view of where we should be playing as a company. And as a result of that, I would lean into it. And I’d probably be coming back to you and say . . . 30 isn’t the right number.” The 30-million AT&T fiber location forecast that the company has set for 2025 represents about half of the locations in the company’s local service footprint, according to Goldman Sachs Group Equity Analyst Brett Joseph Feldman. Stankey has stated that almost 80 percent of fiber net additions are new to AT&T.