AT&T dedicates $800M to increase Oklahoma U-verse, on-net fiber footprint

AT&T (NYSE: T) has allocated nearly $800 million to expand its U-verse and on-net fiber footprint to more business locations in Oklahoma, relfecting its dedication to completing its multi-billion dollar Project VIP initiative.

On the U-verse front, the service provider passed an additional 34,000 new customer locations with its U-verse Internet and TV services.

While this is not an enormous amount of new U-verse sites, it does add to the growing momentum for the U-verse product set. In the first quarter, the telco added a total of 634,000 U-verse broadband and 201,000 U-verse TV subscribers, ending the quarter with a total of 11 million and 5.7 million subscribers, respectively.

It was no less aggressive on the business services front, extending its fiber network to 2,339 business locations at 81 multi-tenant business buildings and business parks.

Building out fiber to more buildings will enable AT&T to battle more of the legacy-to-next-gen-service growing pains that it continues to work to overcome.

First-quarter declines in legacy products like ATM and Frame Relay were partially offset by continued double-digit growth in strategic business services, such as VPN, Ethernet, cloud, hosting and other advanced IP services that grew 16.1 percent year-over-year.

Oklahoma is just one of many states where the telco is investing in local networks as part of the Project VIP initiative. Since the end of last year, it made similar upgrades in its wireline networks in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas.

For more:
- see the release

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