AT&T, BlackRock team to offer wholesale fibre services
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Editor
| 28 December 2022
Moving outside of its traditional wireline service footprint, comms provider AT&T has announced a joint venture with infrastructure investor BlackRock Alternatives to operate a commercial fibre platform to ISPs and other businesses across the US.
Gigapower 28Dec2022
The newly formed joint venture, Gigapower, will serve customers outside with fibre access technologies in what the partners say will be “innovative and efficient” ways. AT&T will use its US-wide wireless sales capabilities to sell fibre to customers in Gigapower territories and will serve as not only a joint owner but also the first wholesale tenant.

Gigapower plans to deploy a reliable, multi-gig fibre network to an initial 1.5 million customer locations across the US using a commercial open access platform. The Gigapower fibre deployment will be incremental to AT&T’s existing target of 30 million-plus fibre locations, including business locations, by the end of 2025.

“Fibre is the lifeblood of digital commerce,” said Bill Hogg, CEO of Gigapower commenting on setting up the new company. “We have a proven team of professionals building this scalable, commercial open access wireline fibre network. Our goal is to help local service providers provide fibre connectivity, create the communications infrastructure needed to power the next generation of services and bring multi-gig capabilities to help close the gap for those who currently are without multi-gig service.”

“Now more than ever, people are recognising that connecting changes everything,” added John Stankey, CEO of AT&T. “With this joint venture, more customers and communities outside of our traditional service areas will receive the social and economic benefits of the world’s most durable and capable technology to access all the internet has to offer.”