AT&T Has 'No Immediate Need' for Spectrum: CFO
AT&T has the spectrum it needs for its wireless network for now but must be open-minded when any bands become available, AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches said Tuesday at the Mizuho Technology Conference. Desroches also predicted that by the end of the current decade, nearly all economically viable locations will be reached with fiber, which is why the carrier is pushing hard on fiber today.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Desroches said that when he became CFO, AT&T was concerned about its spectrum position. “But since then, we've spent a lot investing in spectrum.” The midband spectrum AT&T acquired in the last few years propagates more efficiently than expected, he said. For the AT&T network, “there is no immediate need for spectrum, but we run this business not for the next five years, we run it for decades to come.”
Whenever spectrum becomes available, “it is something that we would always look at,” Desroches said. But “there is no pressing need that I feel like we have to go out and acquire spectrum in the next 12, 24, even 36 months.”
He also described the importance of AT&T’s recent agreement with Lumen to buy substantially all of that company’s mass-market fiber business for $5.75 billion in cash (see 2505210078). Adding fiber helps on the wireless side as well, since many customers want to buy services from a single provider, he said.
“We've made no secret we like fiber,” the CFO said. “We manage it very well,” and Lumen provides a foothold in 11 states “that we don't do business in currently.” AT&T believes that in a few years, most locations that are economically viable to serve will have fiber access, he said. "It’s really important that we act with purpose and really stay focused and use our capital to stake a claim to those parts of the country that we think are economically attractive, because this opportunity will not exist a decade from now.”
Lumen’s penetration rate is about 25% across its footprint, Desroches said. “We see no reason why, with our distribution network and additional investments, we can't get it to 40%.”