Here’s how AT&T is going to build its gigabit service in Austin

AT&T is set to launch its GigaPower fiber to the home service in Austin (TX) any day now.

Eric Small, VP, fiber broadband planning at AT&T says Austin isn’t a pilot market for AT&T’s fiber to the home effort just because Google has picked the area for its own fiber-to-the-home project (although the government concessions for Google should also help Ma Bell). Small said Austin residents consume 15 percent to 20 percent more broadband than the average AT&T U-verse customer making it a good place to test demand for higher speed services. More Austin residents also have subscribed to AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node U-verse service than currently subscribe to the older DSL technology. The city’s residents are a modern, broadband lovin’ people. Small said that since AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node installation in 2005, in certain parts of the country, in new neighborhoods and in some apartment buildings AT&T has upgraded to fiber to the premise, so the technology involved in the GigaPower service isn’t completely foreign. (Unfortunately for people who live in those neighborhoods, AT&T only offers the standard U-Verse speeds of 24 Mbps or 18 Mbps as opposed to higher speeds associated with fiber to the premise). Now, in Austin, AT&T will upgrade its fiber to the node technology with fiber to the premise and eventually offer the gigabit speeds that fiber can handle. To do this, AT&T is using technology that could be described as “plug and play” to connect homes back to their neighborhood cabinets and terminals. It’s also manufacturing the cables for each neighborhood offsite as opposed to building each fiber strand in the field.

AT&T is considering extending its rollout of ultra-high speed fiber optic broadband service to other cities in the US, said CEO Randall Stephenson.