Customer complaints and Verizon's media campaign attacking AT&T's 3G infrastructure has given a lot of negative publicity to Ma Bell's wireless network which has seen a 5000% increase in data traffic over the past three years. Now with the iPad, iPhone 4G and a slew of other smartphones launching in the market over the next few months, AT&T has its task cut out.
Gearing up for these challenges, the company has said that it will be increasing its infrastructure spending by up to 10% this year. In a media release, AT&T has said that the invesments on wireline and wireless networks would be nearly $19 billion this year; up from the $17.3 billion that was invested last year. Of this, a major portion of the increased budget is expected to be spent on wireless and backhaul networks that will see an increase of close to $2 billion over last year's numbers.
Without doubt, high smartphone density areas like California are expected to see significant levels of infrastructure spending. The company says it will be adding close to 200 new cell sites and upgrade 500 others to 3G this year. Compare this with the investments in California last year when 200 new cell sites were added and another 320 sites were upgraded to 3G. The total investments in the region since 2007 has been close to $1.5 billion.
These additional investments are likely to bring significant improvements in AT&T's network over its rivals, including Verizon. As folks at VentureBeat note, AT&T's investments last year was very much on par with Verizon's own investments which was also around the $17 billion mark.
What do you think of these numbers? Will this investment be enough to tackle the challenge from iPad and new smartphone devices like iPhone 4G? Tell us your views in the comments.
[via Venture Beat]
i have AT&T and i pay ALOT! 3G coverage is BAD….so..therefore….they SUCK
AT&T has the money to cover the damn US but the way they are building their network is just a strategy to keep their ceo's rich. Besides, if the company uses a big chunk of their expenses and verizon drops their prices even more AT&T would not be financially strong enough to compete and risk the business into a huge dept just to pick thselves back up. I hate ATT for their prices and their services where I live but I got to hand it to them, they know how to keep their hands on everyones necks in this game of monopoly
AT&T should realize that its pretty easy to switch wireless companies, and, with sites like this, its pretty easy to take your phone with you. Kneel before your customers.
I wonder how much 10% of nothing is?
Seriously thou, this is all kinda stupid – why can't the companies figure out a way to share technology and towers? Or nationalize the infrastructure? The current method of cell use is like the airlines refusing to share airports – Delta having it's own airport, and then US Air having its own… all in the same city. With common infrastructure, the cell companies cna focus on differientiating by customer service, price, cell phones, etc.
John..it all comes down to $$$
it's obviuos you all are idiots. leave – find another carrier and stop complaining.
when will these data chumps realize that spending all this money on QOS is pointless, they should follow the simple rule that bandwidth brings QoS by default, and bandwidth is so cheap to implement at the moment, so just put in a 10G to each cell site and upgrade the core to 40G, jobs a good un, thats what were doing in europe.