AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson said that if their $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile is approved by regulators, AT&T will spend over $8 billion over a three year period to expand 4G LTE coverage to 97 percent of Americans. Stephenson also talked about the acquisition and their efforts to explain why this deal would benefit companies. He said that AT&T thinks it will be at least six years before the FCC can get enough spectrum onto the wireless market, which is why they felt compelled to make the T-Mobile deal. According to AT&T the move to LTE is primarily related to spectral efficiency and lower latency, not to simply boost download/upload speeds.
They also plan to deploy 2,000 cell sites this year in an effort to upgrade their network to the faster HSPA+ network technology. Although HSPA+ is faster than Verizon and Sprint's 3G CDMA networks, it's no match for Verizon's 4G LTE network currently available in 55 markets. This will put AT&T at a disadvantage, but Stephenson said they're not worried about getting behind Verizon and they plan to compete heavily over data speeds and network performance. "That's going to be the fight," he said. "It's going to be the boxing match." They plan to launch LTE in five markets this summer and cover 70 million POPs by the end of 2011.
