Sunday, November 9, 2014

AT&T Says CAPEX for Project VIP has Peaked

AT&T confirmed that capital expenditures for its three year old Project VIP will have peaked in 2014. As a result, AT&T now expects its 2015 capital expenditure budget for its existing businesses to be in the $18 billion range, or "mid-teens" as a percentage of total revenues and consistent with historical capital spending levels.

Expansion of AT&T's 4G LTE network is largely complete as the network now covers more than 300 million people in the United States.

AT&T has also completed the build-out of wired high-speed Internet service to 57 million U.S. customer locations. Under the project, the company has deployed fiber connections to 600,000 of its planned 1 million multi-tenant U.S. business locations.

AT&T said it will continue to focus its capital investments on the most strategically important assets and opportunities, such as acquiring DIRECTV and Iusacell, while continuously reviewing and rationalizing its portfolio of less strategic assets.

http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_mexico_wireless_provider_iusacell.html



As outlined in 2011, objectives of the three year Project VIP included:

Densification of the wireless grid through multiple technology deployments, including 10,000+ new macro sites, 1,000+ distributed antenna systems, and 40,000+ small cells.  Over half of the densification will come from small cells. 

Extending the wireline broadband network to 57 million homes.  

Extending fiber to many more business locations.  The target is for 1 million more customer locations in 3 years.