As we look to the future of our network, it’s important to recognize everything our team has accomplished during the last few years to help create the best experiences for our customers.
Thanks to these efforts, today:
· Our wireless network covers more than 99% of Americans.
· Our 100% fiber network is one of the nation’s largest1 and is available to nearly 14 million locations across 85 metros nationwide.
· We connect more Internet of Things devices than any other provider in North America.
The work we've done in our own backyard of Dallas is a great example of how we're bringing this to life. Building out a network takes time, but in the last few years we've made significant steps forward.
Expanding our Footprint – For Everyone Across DFW
In the last three years, we’ve invested more than $3.5 billion in our Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington wireless and wired networks to boost reliability, coverage, speed and overall performance for residents and businesses. Our goal is to provide service to those who want it – no matter their neighborhood or socio-economic status.
We have made, and exceeded, commitments to bring fiber to areas that are considered underserved throughout Dallas and have met that commitment year after year. In fact, in 2017 we more than doubled the number of eligible fiber locations in Southern Dallas to 50,000 and since then, we’ve more than doubled that to nearly 130,000 available locations.
Today, more than half of all households in our Dallas-Fort Worth internet service area have access to speeds faster than 100Mbps. If you narrow that to Southern Dallas, an area where we've deployed more fiber per capita than the rest of the DFW area, the number is much higher at 70%.
Bringing the Latest Technology Home
We’re also gaining momentum across the latest technologies. Nearly 100% of the DFW-Metroplex is covered by 5G Evolution, our first step on the path to nationwide 5G.
We're also live in Dallas and other cities across the country with 5G+ over super-fast, limited-range mmWave. Thanks to our ongoing dialogue with cities and municipalities, we've been able to further deploy small cells - critical infrastructure our network needs to support this technology of the future.
Small cells are one of several tools we use to boost capacity and manage traffic on our network. As we continue to invest in expanding our network, more of our customers will have access to higher speed broadband access, whether provided over our wireless network, our traditional fiber network or a combination of both.
While our initial 5G+ deployment is focused on dense, high-traffic zones where enterprise applications can take advantage of lower latency and faster speeds, we’ve also announced 5G on lower band sub-6 spectrum for broader coverage, which will be available nationwide in the first half of 2020.
Our Work is Never Done
Our customers are always top of mind, and we are committed to them and the communities where they live. Since January, we've made nearly 2,000 wireless network upgrades across DFW and more than 80% of those were upgrades to cell towers or new tower builds where capacity needs are the greatest. We continue making progress in the second half of 2019.
Between 2014 and 2018, we invested more in the U.S. than any other public company — more than $130 billion including capital investment and acquisitions of spectrum and wireless operations.
Providing the best experience to our customers is at the core of who we are. There is still more to be accomplished, but lucky for us, our work is never done.
