AT&T CEO says fiber rollout is an all hands on deck effort

AT&T is enlisting employees across the organization to make its fiber rollout to 30 million homes by 2025 a success, taking an all hands on deck approach to ensure it pushes penetration rates up as quickly as possible to get a return on its hefty investments. CEO John Stankey said its initial focus for the build has been filling in a patchwork of earlier fiber deployments in metropolitan areas to enable it to advertise in a more efficient fashion. When an entire area is covered, that means it can advertise more broadly to raise awareness about its products rather than having to tailor its efforts to coverage zones that look like Swiss cheese. He added that by focusing all its employees on a common goal, it has been able to ramp up a formidable construction and marketing machine. Stankey added it’s looking to extend its fiber focus to more than just its fixed products. “Everything starts with fiber,” he said. “If you’re truly going to get the benefits of 5G and distributed deployment, every wireless access point needs fiber on the back side of it.”