Utopia Fiber chief thinks AT&T isn't really doing open access

Utopia Fiber has been building open access fiber networks before hardly anyone in the U.S. knew what that was. Now, open access is gaining prominence, thanks to big players like AT&T getting in on the action. But Roger Timmerman, executive director and CEO of Utopia Fiber, said he doesn’t consider AT&T’s Gigapower joint venture with BlackRock to be a true open access network—at least not yet. Timmerman argued that in his opinion AT&T isn’t really doing open access because it’s the only tenant on the Gigapower network. And the whole point of an open access network is for multiple providers to use the underlying infrastructure. He said Gigapower will first probably be “a new brand of wholesale network expansion for AT&T." Eventually it might be a true open access network outside of AT&T’s legacy footprint. But word on the street, according to Timmerman, is that AT&T doesn’t have a big desire to make the Gigapower network widely open.