AT&T Sees Gigabit Networks Where 25% of Households Want It

Google Fiber is having the intended effect, namely convincing other leading ISPs that gigabit networks are feasible and have demand.


AT&T, now facing Google Fiber in Austin, Texas and Kansas City, Mo., now believes there will be demand for gigabit or other similar very high speed networks in neighborhoods, if not whole areas of every city.

AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson says AT&T is not the only ISP that will want to provide gigabit or other very high speed service,  though perhaps in neighborhoods with many potential customers, rather than "everywhere."

"The key is being able to do it in areas where you know there's going to be high demand, and people are willing to pay the premium to be able to do it," Stephenson said. 

Stephenson suggested the ideal level of potential subscribers would occur when 25 percent to 35 percent of households in a neighborhood want it. 

The real implications are not limited to the actual number of consumers able to buy, and buying, gigabit connections. The more important implication will be the number of consumers who buy 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps connections by 2020. 

By 2020, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that 100 Mbps will be a common consumer access speed.

In 2002, it is hard to remember, only about 10 percent of U.S. households were buying broadband service. A decade later, virtually all Internet-using households were buying broadband access service.

The point is that an order of magnitude increase, over about a decade, is doable.

In 2009, long before there was Google Fiber, Technology Futures predicted that, in 2015, about 20 percent of U.S. households would be buying access at 100 Mbps, about 20 percent at 50 Mbps, and something more than 20 percent will be buying service at about 24 Mbps.

It might be a bit of a stretch to hit that 2015 forecast, but the direction and momentum is clear enough, as implausible as it might have seemed just two years ago.

Even mobile networks could be offering breathtaking amounts of bandwidth in a couple of decades.