AT&T Expands High-Speed Internet Rollout

AT&T Inc. expanded its planned rollout of high-speed Internet service to as many as 100 cities and towns, amid tougher competition as rivals in the cable industry bulk up.

The telecom giant said Monday it will now target major metropolitan areas including Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The bulk of the new locations overlap with service areas for Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable, which have agreed to merge in a $45 billion deal that would combine two of the country's biggest broadband providers.

AT&T executives have told investors recently that the deal has led them to recalibrate their priorities, prompting a more aggressive upgrade of their network. Lori Lee, senior executive vice president of AT&T Home Solutions, said in an interview that the move would make AT&T a tougher competitor for the cable industry.

The company hopes to begin deploying the new service in some locations by the end of the year. Earlier this month, AT&T said it was in advanced talk to bring speeds of up to one gigabit per second to six North Carolina cities, in addition to its current upgrading of Austin and plans for a similar service in Dallas.

The rollout is happening as Google Inc. builds up its own network of fiber in cities like Austin and Kansas City, Kans. In February, Google said it was eyeing dozens of municipalities where it wanted to expand its fiber network.

Notably, AT&T said Monday that it is looking to bring its higher speed service to Kansas City and the surrounding area, Google's first location for its fiber service.

AT&T said the upgrades will fall under its planned spending to upgrade the bulk of its network to run on Internet technologies and won't affect its 2014 budget.

The new cities are mostly ones where AT&T already offers its U-verse Internet and television services. AT&T has built a fiber-based network for the U-verse service, but typically uses copper wire to make the final connections to buildings.

In upgrading to the higher speeds, AT&T is replacing those copper portions with fiber; and, like in other cities it is upgrading, it will only offer the high-speed service where there is demand.

Write to Thomas Gryta at [e-mail]

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