Telephone operator AT&T Inc. said on Monday it would offer new satellite-based fast Internet services in U.S. rural markets and expand its investment in emerging WiMax wireless connections.
"We are beginning to offer satellite-based broadband service in areas where our DSL service is not available today, giving more consumers a broadband choice," AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Ed Whitacre said in a speech at the Detroit Economic club.
AT&T is partnering with satellite-based high-speed Internet provider WildBlue to provide the service.
The telecommunications giant, which plans to buy BellSouth Corp. later this year, will also expand its market efforts related to WiMax and other fixed wireless technologies with new deployments this year in Texas and Nevada.
"Today, we reach more than eighty percent of our residential customers with DSL service," Whitacre said. "My hope is that through initiatives such as these, we can bring the benefits of broadband to all our customers."
WiMax is a more powerful version of Wi-Fi, a wireless Web connection built into most laptops, but that only covers small areas such as a coffee shop.
AT&T also said that, in the next three years, it would make a video service it is developing available to more than 5.5 million low-income households as part of its "Project Lightspeed" fiber optic network plans.
AT&T is building a high-speed fiber network to support television services and faster Internet connections as it works to compete better with cable operators, which now offer telephone services, as well as Internet and television.
"We have introduced the service in San Antonio, and it's going very well," Whitacre said. "We will roll it out to many more markets later this year."
Whitacre said the video service will be launched in Houston next.
"Then we will go to 18 million households in the next three years," he said.
Another large regional telephone company, Verizon Communications, is building a fiber network and already sells video services in several markets.
Whitacre, speaking to reporters later, said the company was on track to achieve its target of adjusted earnings per share growth in the double digit percentage range in the next three years.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.
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