AT&T executive: ‘I almost feel bad’ for cable companies up against our fiber

Cable operators have talked a big game about the faster broadband speeds their DOCSIS upgrades will bring, but AT&T EVP of Technology Operations Chris Sambar said he’s not even remotely worried they’ll pose a competitive threat to its fiber products. “I think that to get to DOCSIS 4 they’re going to have to spend a lot of money and I think they know it. I think that’s why I think they keep messing around with multi-gig speeds that are asymmetrical and have terrible uploads,” he said. “I believe we are already ahead of them on multi-gigabit symmetrical. We’ll be ahead of them on 10-gig symmetrical by years.” Sambar added, “I almost feel bad for them." In 2021 AT&T unveiled a goal to double its fiber footprint to 30 million customer locations by end-2025. In December 2021, AT&T CEO John Stankey stated the operator was looking beyond just edge outs and assessing strategic opportunities to extend fiber to greenfield markets outside of its traditional ILEC footprint. Sambar said these could include areas where a telecommunications company LEC hasn’t already deployed and doesn’t plan to rollout fiber and the only other option is cable. Asked what kind of markets it might target, Sambar said its moves will largely depend on AT&T’s calculations around achievable penetration rates and return on capital spent.