By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~ May 14, 2019

AT&T’s CEO said that the operator expects to be able to offer a “true, high-speed Internet network throughout the United States” in the next three to five years via a combination of fiber and 5G.

“In three to five years out, there will be a cross-over point. We go through this all the time in industry,” AT&T’s Randall Stephenson said in comments today at an investor relations event. “5G will cross over, performance wise, with what you’re seeing in home broadband. We’re seeing it in business now over our millimeter-wave spectrum. And there will be a place — it may be in five years, I think it could be as early as three — where 5G begins to actually have a cross-over point in terms of performance with fiber. 5G can become the deployment mechanism for a lot of the broadband that we’re trying to hit today with fiber.”

Continued Stephenson: “So all things considered, over the next three to five years, [there will be a] continued push on fiber, 5G begins to scale in millimeter-wave, and my expectation is that we have a nationwide, true, high-speed Internet network throughout the United States, 5G or fiber.”

Stephenson’s comments essentially represent an expansion of what he said in January during AT&T’s earnings call with investors. At that time, Stephenson said 5G will serve as “a true replacement opportunity” for fixed broadband services in three to five years.

However, it’s unclear exactly what AT&T might actually do with the kind of nationwide broadband network Stephenson is promising. Will AT&T use that network to offer in-home Internet services in a direct challenge to the likes of Comcast and Charter, as Verizon is working to do with its 5G Home service? Or will the company simply use the network to offer select services to businesses? More importantly, would AT&T price such services in a competitive way, or will the economics of the technology give existing, wired suppliers a financial advantage?

By Mitch Wagner; Light Reading ~ Apr 29, 2019

AT&T’s new, fully cloudified 5G network relies on an open source provisioning tool called “Airship,” which hits a milestone Monday with the availability of Version 1, the first production version.

“Airship is a declarative software delivery and lifecycle management tool,” Amy Wheelus, AT&T’s vice president for network cloud, tells Light Reading. Airship automates configuration and lifecycle management of infrastructure software to build a cloud server software stack on bare metal.

“It’s a tool for lifecycle management of infrastructure software. It can start with bare metal, and build everything up to orchestration,” Wheelus says. Airship automates provisioning, compute and storage assets, including the operating system, OpenStack and other containerized software.

AT&T uses Airship as a valuable infrastructure component of its Network Cloud, on which it has deployed its 5G packet core to support this year’s ambitious 5G rollout schedule. AT&T’s Network Cloud will comprise hundreds of locations at the network edge, Wheelus says.

By Mike Dano; Light Reading ~ Apr 24, 2019

AT&T’s CEO suggested that the telco may someday offer 5G services at different speeds for different price points, as the company currently does with its wired network.

“I would be very surprised if, as we move into wireless, the pricing regime in wireless doesn’t look something like the pricing regime you see in fixed line,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said today during the operator’s quarterly conference call with analysts. “If you can offer a Gig speed, there are some customers that are willing to pay a premium, or 500 Meg to a Gig speed, and so forth. So I expect that to be the case. We’re two or three years away from seeing that right now from a 5G standpoint.”

By Sheila Dang & Akanksha Rana; Reuters ~ Apr 24, 2019

(Reuters) – AT&T Inc’s first-quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street estimates on Wednesday after it lost subscribers in nearly all of its main businesses except wireless, where it paid heavily to gain customers through price promotions.

AT&T lost a net 544,000 premium TV subscribers, a category that includes DirecTV satellite and U-verse television customers. Analysts had expected a loss of 385,000 customers across DirecTV and U-verse, according to research firm FactSet.

Pay-TV providers have struggled to keep customers as viewers move to streaming services like Netflix Inc. AT&T has launched its own streaming service, but that too lost customers in the quarter.

While T stock has many positives, its most critical attribute is that it’s too big and important to fail

From Josh Enomoto; InvestorPlace ~ Apr 18, 2019

Big, boring AT&T (NYSE:T) recently made a splash, selling its minority stake in streaming video site Hulu. AT&T stock gained 0.7% on the news.

Thanks to its Time Warner deal, the telecom giant received a 9.5% stake in Hulu, which it sold earlier this week for $1.43 billion. That values the streaming firm at around $15 billion.

Source: Shutterstock

Of course, those happiest about the sale are Disney (NYSE:DIS) and Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA). They own approximately 60% and 30% of Hulu, respectively.

The divestment has several positive consequences for T stock. For years, critics have complained that the debt of the telecom firm is excessive. The sale was a small, but important, step towards streamlining the massive company and lowering its debt.

By Jeff Baumgartner; Light Reading ~ Apr 15, 2019

AT&T has sold its 9.5% stake in OTT video service provider Hulu for $1.43 billion.

The companies said the transaction values Hulu, which is majority owned by Disney, at $15 billion. They noted that the deal didn’t require governmental or other third-party approvals, so it was simultaneously signed and closed.

The deal gives Disney even more control of Hulu, the company behind an SVoD and live TV streaming service with about 25 million subs combined. Disney, which will get deeper into the direct-to-consumer OTT game when it launches Disney+ on November 12, secured 60% of Hulu following the 21st Century Fox deal, and will now have about 70% of the OTT company.

By Dan Jones; Light Reading ~ Apr 10, 2019

AT&T is rolling out mobile 5G in parts of seven more cities in the US.

The operator says it’s launching its 3GPP-based mobile 5G in parts of Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose with immediate effect. As a result, its 5G service using 39GHz millimeter wave spectrum is now available in parts of 19 cities.

The operator is also planning the launch of a nationwide sub-6GHz 5G network: That will start rolling later this year. AT&T has not yet revealed exactly which frequencies will be used for that deployment.

To that end, AT&T is planning to have “at least” three 5G mobile devices out this year. It has already launched the Netgear Nighthawk 5G hotspot, even if that is not widely available yet.

By Herbert Lash; Reuters ~ Apr 01, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A winning bidder has been selected for the sale of AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit’s stake in the second-tallest office building in Manhattan, a deal expected to top $2 billion, a source involved in the bidding said on Monday.

The winner, whose identity remains undisclosed, was chosen at the end of last week for WarnerMedia’s 1.5 million square feet (139,355 meters) of space at 30 Hudson Yards, the hub of the trendy development project on Manhattan’s far west side, the source said.

An announcement could come as early this week.

AT&T’s 5G hotspots can now get 1Gbps speeds, and that’s a good sign for the industry as a whole. In an exclusive interview, Igal Elbaz, AT&T’s SVP of wireless technology, explains.

By Sascha Segan; PC Magazine ~  Mar 30, 2019 

AT&T just made a major upgrade to its nascent 5G network—one that suggests fast wireless speeds for many more people are around the corner.

In a brief statement Friday, AT&T said its Netgear Nighthawk 5G mobile hotspot had hit speeds of over 1Gbps on the company’s live 5G NR network, which is available by invitation in 12 cities right now. The technical leap making that possible was an upgrade to allow four-carrier aggregation of 100MHz carriers, Igal Elbaz, AT&T’s SVP of wireless technology, said in an exclusive interview with PCMag.

BusinessWire ~  Mar 29, 2019

DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The board of directors of AT&T Inc.* (NYSE: T) today declared a quarterly dividend of $0.51 a share on the company’s common shares. The dividend is payable on May 1, 2019, to stockholders of record at the close of business on April 10, 2019.