AT&T has experienced an explosive growth in network traffic over the past two years, said John T. Stankey, AT&T Group President - Telecom Operations, speaking at the Merrill Lynch Communications Forum in New York City. Consumer broadband traffic has risen 145% in the past 2 years, while business traffic rose 60% in 2007 over 2006. Wireless data traffic was up 4X in 2007 over 2006. AT&T now delivers connectivity to over one billion devices on its network.
As the business continues to scale, managing the cost per megabit of traffic is becoming a critical factor. On this score, Stankey said the company's IP backbone delivered a 67% reduction in the cost per megabit carried in 2007 over the preceding year, while OC192 transport costs declined 83% from 2006 levels.
Some highlights from Stankey's presentation:
- AT&T is now forecasting a 4X growth in IP backbone traffic over the next 3 years.
- According to AT&T's monitoring, MSO cable modem traffic is consistently below the 6~8 Mbps advertised. The average speed often is below 1 Mbps.
- AT&T is building out content server locations and network caches around the U.S. to enhance the end-user experience
- The AT&T U-verse platform is expected to reach 30 million living units by the end of 2010
- AT&T hopes to reach 40,000 U-verse installs per week by the end of 2008
- In markets where U-verse has been available for more than 12 months, the penetration rate is 13.4%
- New U-verse features for 2008 are expected to include a Photo and Media Sharing service (1H08), two HD Stream capability (2Q~3Q 08), Whole home DVR capability (2H08), CVoIP expansion, and copper pair bonding (4Q08).
- The U-verse bandwidth profile has a 25 Mbps budget over a single copper pair line at up to 3,000ft. This supports 2 HD and 2 SD streams, 2 VoIP lines and up to 10 Mbps Internet service.
- About 80% of U-verse customers will be on loop lengths of under 3,000ft. A pair-bonding solution will be introduced later this year for customers on longer loops. Pair bonding could also be used to deliver more than 2 HD simultaneous HD streams per home should the market demand it.
- For SMBs, AT&T intends to introduce a "Business in a Box" CPE solution that integrates voice and data. The CPE will incorporate the following capabilities: router, LAN switch with PoE, firewall, WiFi/Wireless access point and IP VPNs.
An archived webcast of the presentation is available in the Investors Relations section of the AT&T website.
http://www.att.com
