AT&T Sketches Out Life After Hollywood

AT&T on Friday mentioned it might focus its investments on fifth-generation wi-fi community connections and fiber-optic traces. To that finish, the corporate mentioned it might lower its community of copper traces—a legacy of its landline phone community—in half by 2025, permitting the corporate to serve 75% of its community footprint utilizing 5G and fiber.

The corporate mentioned it might double the variety of places it serves by means of fiber traces to greater than 30 million. That suggests AT&T will add one other 3.5 million to 4 million fiber places to its subscriber base every year.

AT&T and

Verizon Communications Inc.

have each refocused their consideration on broadband and mobile-phone service in recent times after scrapping huge bets on digital media and leisure. Verizon final week provided traders an outline of its plans for coming years and mentioned its “extremely wideband” 5G community will cowl 175 million folks by the top of 2022, a 12 months forward of schedule.

AT&T executives have mentioned they might increase their 5G community extra slowly to reap the benefits of wi-fi spectrum licenses as they grow to be accessible. The corporate mentioned it might increase its portfolio of 5G airwaves with extra C-band spectrum that may cowl 200 million folks by the top of 2023.

AT&T plans to just about halve its dividend after closing its media spinoff, a transfer that may assist the remaining telecom firm steer money towards different priorities. The corporate mentioned Friday it expects to pay its Could dividend according to the brand new $1.11 annual payout. Executives count on the WarnerMedia spinoff and merger with Discovery to shut early within the second quarter.

Shares in AT&T rose lower than 1% in early buying and selling.