AT&T Ups U-verse Spending, Revises Rollout

After adding $1.4 billion to its U-verse spending tab in late spring, AT&T Inc. on Tuesday said it will spend roughly $500 million more to deploy the service, with the latest increase attributed to expansion in the region previously covered by BellSouth.

The total spend for 2007 and 2008 is now between $4.5 billion and $5 billion. The carrier has also ratcheted down its homes passed figure from 18 million to 17 million by the end of next year and plans to provide an update on these plans in mid-December.

The changes reflect a shift in costs and resources to cover the planned deployment of U-verse services in the Southeast. “This new investment largely represents start-up costs in the Southeast, including new video hub offices and other back-end systems,” said an AT&T spokesperson.

It has been unclear since its acquisition of BellSouth was complete how AT&T would deploy U-verse in Southeastern states and whether it would look to satellite based services like its Homezone package to cover the geographically-dispersed and largely rural territory.

These investments do not immediately result in more new homes passed, so the company now plans to pass approximately 17 million homes by the end of 2008, said the spokesperson, with significant expansion planned in the following years.

The additional $1.4 billion in spending announced earlier this year focused primarily on new builds, which will include GPON equipment from vendors including Ericsson.

AT&T Inc. www.att.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines