X

AT&T finishes rollout of 1Gbps connection in Austin

The telecom giant plans to expand its GigaPower fiber network to dozens more cities, as it competes with Google and others to provide super-fast Internet speeds.

Ben Fox Rubin Former senior reporter
Ben Fox Rubin was a senior reporter for CNET News in Manhattan, reporting on Amazon, e-commerce and mobile payments. He previously worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and got his start at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Ben Fox Rubin
2 min read

logo de AT&T
AT&T

AT&T has completed upgrading its fiber-network in Austin, Texas, to 1-gigabit-per-second broadband speeds, the carrier said Monday.

The Dallas-based company, which started the Austin upgrade in August, has been working to increase the speed of its U-Verse with GigaPower fiber network from 300 megabits-per-second to 1Gbps. AT&T is racing to bring faster Internet to customers before its competitors.

AT&T announced in April 2013 that it would bring 1Gbps broadband speeds to Austin -- within a week of Google's announcement that it would bring the 1Gbps Google Fiber broadband service to the city.

The race to get cities 1Gbps broadband services at affordable, sub-$100 pricing, was started by Google, which first introduced its Google Fiber broadband service in Kansas City, Kansas, in 2012. AT&T and other companies have answered the challenge. And it looks as though AT&T, more than any other incumbent broadband provider in the market, is moving aggressively on its deployments.

In January, AT&T committed to doubling the reach of its fiber network around Austin by the end of this year. That expansion was completed in September -- three months ahead of schedule -- and now reaches tens of thousands of additional homes and small businesses in Austin and surrounding communities.

All current GigaPower customers in Austin have been upgraded to the faster speed at no additional cost. Both the Google and AT&T services will be available for $70 a month, though Google's project is still under construction.

AT&T plans to expand its 1Gbps service to up to 100 candidate cities and municipalities across 25 markets nationwide. So far, the company has confirmed its plans to deploy the service in 27 cities across 11 markets. These cities include Raleigh-Durham, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Charlotte in North Carolina; Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio in Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; and Overland Park, Kansas.