In a keynote presentation this week at the Deutsche Bank 2018 Media, Telecom and Business Services Conference, AT&T SVP and CFO John Stephens likened the carrier’s build out of FirstNet to building a house and leaving room to add 5G.
Stephens said the unanimous opt-in for FirstNet, a nationwide LTE network for first responders, gives AT&T the ability to conduct one network build that puts FirstNet into service, upgrades the existing LTE network and allows for a software-based roll out of 5G. AWS, WCS and the 700 MHz FirstNet spectrum are put into service “on a very economic basis because we can do one tower climb, we have the crane out there once, we have the people out there once, and they put all three pieces of spectrum in at once.”
