AT&T expands high-speed internet to 70K locations in rural U.S.

high-speed internet

AT&T expands high-speed internet access in rural areas in a big way. AT&T said, its Fixed Wireless Internet offering for rural and underserved areas is now available through 70,000 locations across nine states.

After an initial launch in Georgia, AT&T has expanded it to parts of Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana.

The service is part of AT&T’s participation in the FCC"s Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF-II). AT&T, Verizon and eight other carriers accepted a total of $1.5 billion in late 2015 in the second phase of that initiative, which aims to bring broadband service to an estimated 23 million Americans in rural areas.

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AT&T

AT&T said, it plans to serve more than 400,000 locations with the service by the end of the year, growing to 1.1 million locations by 2020.

Customers in Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Texas able to access offer end of the year.

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"We"re committed to connecting hard-to-reach locations to the internet. This change lives and creates economic growth in these areas," said Cheryl Choy, vice-president, wired voice and internet products at AT&T, and excited to bring service even more underserved locations.

The AT&T"s Fixed Wireless internet provides download speeds of up to 10Mbps and 160GB of data a month up to a maximum of $200 a month. Customers must have an AT&T-provided outdoor antenna and the carrier’s indoor residential gateway, and additional buckets of 50 GB of data are available for $10 each up to a maximum of $200 a month.

The products and services are provided by subsidies and affiliates of AT&T under the carrier’s brand, but not directly by the carrier itself.

Earlier this year, AT&T conducting Wireless Local Loop (WLL) tests on its LTE network in two locations in the U.S. In 2015, AT&T testing WLL in select areas of the country with local residents who wanted to try it, including in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Virginia. AT&T reported it had seen speeds of roughly 15 Mbps to 25 Mbps using WLL.