AT&T Eyeing 5G Service in 20 Markets by Year's End as CEO Eyes Disclosing More FirstNet Opt-Ins

AT&T launched 5G service in Indianapolis and Austin, and expects to be in 20 markets by year's end, executives said on a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. It's testing LTE licensed assisted access -- combining licensed and unlicensed spectrum -- in San Francisco, where users are seeing 750 Mbps peak speeds -- and it will expand testing in San Francisco and into Indianapolis in coming weeks. It said it still expects to close on its Time Warner buy by year's end, and its integration team is close to done with its advertising and bundling plan. For the quarter, AT&T had consolidated revenue of $39.8 billion, and had 2.3 million wireless net adds in the U.S. and 8,000 total broadband net adds. It said it had total video subscription losses of 199,000, with growth at DirecTV Now offsetting some traditional TV subscriber declines. CEO Randall Stephenson said AT&T soon will unveil the names of additional states that agreed to opt in to FirstNet, beyond the five revealed so far. “The timeline has been set and the opt-in process is underway,” he said. States are eager to get started on construction of the network “and so are we,” he said. Stephenson said AT&T will look at all of its options as construction starts.