Network Quality & Reliability

Connectivity has become vital to our lives, from keeping in touch with family to staying on top of business. And when a community is hit by crisis, that connection can be a lifeline. To meet the ever-growing reliance on connectivity, we’ve expanded and enhanced our network and services through 5G and high-speed fiber. As a result, families, businesses and public safety agencies count on us for the services they need to succeed and thrive. At the end of 2023, our 5G network reached more than 302 million people in nearly 24,500 cities and towns across the U.S.

In keeping with the longstanding legacy of innovation at AT&T, we are constantly drawing on our internal expertise and collaborating with leading partners to bring new technology to bear in the network. That includes adding resilience to ensure our network can withstand the impacts of climate change. And it will allow our network to stay in front of the ever-growing demand for high-speed data. At the end of 2023, our global network carried an average of 680.6 petabytes of data per day, an increase of more than 159% since 2018.  

For more information, see our Global Reporting Initiative Index and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board Index.

In 2023, AT&T took the following actions to continue enhancing the quality and reliability of our network:

• We deliver three types of 5G to our customers to meet different needs. Our mid-band 5G+ spectrum provides a combination of ultra-fast speeds and wide geographic coverage. In 2023, our mid-band 5G+ spectrum grew to cover more than 210 million people and is now available nationwide.
• We’re constantly exploring new ways to drive climate-informed decision-making and to better manage physical climate risk. For years, we have been working with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to get the best climate data to help make our network more climate resilient. We have future-looking climate projections on wind, drought, wildfire and flooding at the neighborhood level, up to 30 years in the future. We are continuing to expand and improve our application of this data to develop new and more-useful insights into future weather events and trends, so that we can take climate change into account as we plan for network buildouts, maintenance and disaster preparedness.
• We strengthened communications for first responders with the FirstNet network, covering more than 2.97 million square miles and more than 99% of the U.S. population. In 2023, the FirstNet team at AT&T provided critical communications, deploying more than 1,800 solutions to support public safety nationwide, including during and after the Maui Fire, Hurricane Idalia, Hurricane Lee, Hurricane Hilary and other events. 
• We’ve collaborated with Ericsson to lead the U.S. in commercial-scale open radio access network (Open RAN) deployment, helping to build a more robust ecosystem of network infrastructure providers and suppliers.

Governance

Our Network teams collect billions of service-assurance measurements across our wireline and wireless networks every hour, analyzing this data in near-real time to help improve performance and deliver our best customer experience. Our Business Continuity Management Program maintains recovery strategies and procedures that are updated, exercised and certified on an annual basis, or more frequently as business conditions require. The following roles are responsible for governance of network quality, resilience and business continuity: 

• Executive Vice President—Network: This role is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of our network resilience and business continuity efforts.
• Access Construction & Engineering: This team is responsible for engineering, build and operations of wireline and wireless networks.
• Engineering & Operations: This team is responsible for planning our roadmap for mobility core and broadband growth, network operations support, energy optimization and infrastructure provisioning. This organization also manages business continuity planning, the Global Technology Operations Center and 24/7 monitoring of our network.
• Network Planning & Engineering: This team is responsible for leading the management of AT&T’s relationship with other telecommunications providers worldwide, management of AT&T’s network capital, global technology planning for network technologies and operations for AT&T’s wireless roaming and tower portfolios.
• Board of Directors: The AT&T Board of Directors receives regular reports on network matters from executive leadership, primarily from the Executive Vice President—Network.

To learn about our network management policies, see our Network Practices website.

Network Investment

AT&T uses a combination of fiber and 5G to deliver reliable, high-speed internet to urban, suburban and rural areas across America. Over the past five years (2019 to 2023), AT&T invested more than $145 billion primarily in our wireless and wireline networks, including capital investments and acquisitions of wireless spectrum.² Our strategy continues to focus on the following:

• 5G Expansion: In 2023, we expanded our 5G network to reach more than 302 million people in nearly 24,500 cities and towns in the U.S. Our higher-speed mid-band 5G+ spectrum alone covered more than 210 million people by the end of 2023. Offering mid-band 5G+ complements our even faster high-band 5G+ with another crucial layer in our network. With our mid-band holdings, AT&T will nearly double the amount of capable capacity we acquired for legacy 4G and earlier networks. We are actively layering in mid-band 5G+ spectrum to equip networks for customer demand and future use cases.
• 4G Investment: We continue to invest in our 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to provide our customers with the performance and reliability they expect, no matter where they are. 
  • We are deploying transmission equipment closer to the antennas on our cell towers to improve network performance, helping extend coverage and enhance speed and reliability. Cell towers are connected to the AT&T network via fiber cables, and these connections are being enhanced to enable faster wireless connections.
  • Through various access points, we are placing antennas where they have the most impact through the use of small cells, macro cells and distributed antenna systems. This approach serves both 4G LTE and 5G service while also helping efficiently deploy spectrum assets.
  • Our network is designed with its core elements distributed across the country. That means data traffic gets on the internet faster, which increases mobile data speeds.
• Fiber Internet Footprint: We take an integrated fiber planning approach with the goal of attaching as many endpoints as possible to each strand of fiber. Expanding our fiber footprint allows us to offer fast, low-latency internet service to businesses and consumers. To ensure our customers have the best connectivity solutions to meet their needs, AT&T Fiber offers symmetrical speeds up to 5 gigs across parts of its entire footprint of more than 100 U.S. metro areas. ³
• Reliable High-Speed Service for Businesses: As of Q4 2023, AT&T fiber passed more than 26 million business and consumer locations. We are also on track to pass 30 million fiber locations by the end of 2025. Through products like AT&T Business Fiber, AT&T Switched Ethernet and AT&T Dedicated Internet, fiber in the AT&T network provides the bandwidth needed to support data-intensive services such as video, collaboration, cloud services and more for businesses. 

For the latest information on our deployment and coverage, visit the AT&T Network website.

Network Resilience

To help ensure our cell sites can withstand natural disasters and other environmental factors, our engineers conduct regular analyses and complete upgrades or modifications to maintain safe, reliable tower capacity that meets or exceeds all applicable building codes. We deploy battery backup or permanent generators to all our cell sites, which allows service continuity in the event of power loss until primary power is restored. Our approach to network resilience includes:

• Preparation: We have tools to monitor climate- and weather-related events that may impact our network infrastructure, including:
  • Climate Data: For years, we have been working with the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory to get the best climate data to help make our network more climate resilient. We have future-looking climate projections on wind, drought, wildfire and flooding at the neighborhood level, up to 30 years in the future. With this data, AT&T can take climate change into account as we plan for network buildouts, maintenance and disaster preparedness. For more information, please visit our Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas Emissions issue brief.
  • AT&T Weather Operations Center: At this center, AT&T meteorologists proactively monitor potential nature-related threats to our network, employees and communities. For example, in the days leading up to Hurricane Idalia, AT&T was able to position our disaster response equipment and put personnel on standby in strategic areas to expedite our response time in support of impacted communities.
• Network Disaster Recovery: We have invested more than $1.1 billion over the past three decades in our Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) Program, which exists to rapidly restore connectivity to areas affected by disasters. Launched in 1992, our teams have spent thousands of hours in the field and have responded to countless events, from fires and hurricanes to tornadoes and winter storms.
• Disaster Response Procedures: In the event of a disaster or other emergency, we implement procedures to quickly restore network functionality, provide critical resources to impacted employees, field customer inquiries and return or establish service in impacted communities.

To learn more about our approach to network resilience, visit AT&T Disaster Recovery. Our customers can also access information about network outages in their area for the services to which they subscribe on our outages website.

Business Continuity

Our global team of certified and experienced business continuity experts works to maintain the operation of business processes across the company, using a risk-based approach to develop business resumption plans. Our approach to business continuity includes:

• Business Continuity Management Program: The AT&T Business Continuity Management Program includes management disciplines, processes and techniques to support our employees and critical business operations in the event of a significant business disruption, with a focus on maintaining delivery of customer services, including during climate-related events.
• Industry Standards: The AT&T Business Continuity Management Program is certified to the international business continuity standard, ISO 22301:2021. It is also aligned with the Disaster Recovery Institute International Professional Practices, Business Continuity Institute Good Practice Guidelines, Federal Emergency Management Agency National Incident Management System and ISO 31000. Our alignment with these standards indicates our readiness to resume business operations and deliver customer service in the vital hours and days after a disaster.

FirstNet®

FirstNet is the only nationwide, high-speed broadband communications platform built for and dedicated to America’s first responders and the public safety community. Built and maintained by AT&T in public-private partnership with the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority), the FirstNet network enables first responders to communicate more quickly and reliably. AT&T is held accountable by the FirstNet Authority to meet its congressionally mandated obligations. Details of FirstNet include:

• Coverage: More than 99% of the U.S. population and more than 2.97 million square miles are covered by FirstNet. This coverage means more first responders and the communities they serve—rural, urban and Tribal—have access to the critical communications capabilities they need. Thousands of local, state and federal agencies, organizations and first responders, along with millions of individual devices, connect to FirstNet.
• Access: Public safety agencies have access to a nationwide, dedicated fleet of more than 180 land-based and airborne portable cell sites, including Flying COWs® (Cell on Wings), which are cell sites on drones. The FirstNet App Catalog offers reliable applications built and tested specifically for the public safety community’s needs.
• Impact: Public safety agencies rely on FirstNet in situations such as active shootings, bombings, plane crashes, hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes, mudslides and earthquakes. In 2023, the FirstNet team at AT&T provided critical communications during and after the Maui Fire, Hurricane Idalia, Hurricane Lee, Hurricane Hilary and other events. We will continue to expand our support in 2024 and beyond, responding to disruptive weather events and other disasters and emergencies whenever they occur.

Technology Innovation

Technology is an important part of our efforts to address global business and societal challenges. Our network investments lay the foundation for new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, video analytics, virtual reality, augmented reality, edge computing, 5G, hybrid private cellular networks and the Internet of Things (IoT). These investments are an important component of AT&T’s business success, helping to attract employee talent, remain competitive and enhance our brand’s reputation with customers. Our approach to technology innovation includes:

• Research & Development: AT&T scientists and engineers conduct research in areas such as internet protocol networking, advanced network design and architecture, cybersecurity, network operations support systems, satellite technology, video platform development and data analytics. Most development activities are aimed at creating new services and inventing tools and systems to manage secure and reliable networks for our customers and AT&T. 
• Collaboration: The AT&T 5G Innovation Studio brings together organizations across AT&T and explores new enterprise and consumer use cases while accelerating the path to market of new product offerings and key strategic initiatives. The Studio facility is equipped with the latest wireless and wireline technologies, including multi-access edge computing, a private standalone 5G network, multi-gig fiber broadband and more. With customers and industry collaborators, our scientists and engineers ideate, test and validate new 5G-centric applications across a variety of industries. We are also collaborating with MxD to evolve a new demonstration center for emerging manufacturing communications technologies.

2023 Innovation Highlights

• Internet of Things (IoT): In 2023, AT&T hit another U.S. industry first: the first 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) data call in both our lab and in the field on a live 5G standalone network. RedCap brings higher speeds and lower latency to IoT devices while reducing 5G power and bandwidth requirements—an essential development for the future of IoT connectivity. As of Q4 2023, we had more than 127 million connected devices on the AT&T network.
• AT&T Internet Air: We introduced Internet Air, our “fixed wireless” offering that provides home broadband internet service over our 5G network.
• Space Calls: Our network became the first ever to connect an ordinary, unmodified smartphone to a call routed through an orbiting satellite. The connection to space was provided by AST SpaceMobile, which plans to offer connectivity to those in the world who lack cellular broadband access.
• Connected Helmet: We collaborated with Gallaudet University to create the first 5G-connected football helmet—making the game more inclusive by enhancing on-field communication for student athletes who use American Sign Language.
• Standalone 5G: Our team has made significant progress in enabling standalone 5G. Many of the newest mobile devices are ready for 5G standalone, and we continue to enable thousands of customers every day.

Green Network Innovations

We are designing more sustainable networks that are optimized for energy efficiency across hardware and software. Our actions for a more efficient network include:

• Cell Site Sleeping: We enable cell site sleeping in our U.S. mobility network, allowing selected sites to conserve energy during low loads. Our custom machine learning algorithms ensure optimized sleeping without jeopardizing customer experience. This technique saved the equivalent of the annual power consumption of more than 14,000 average homes in 2023.
• Anomaly Detection: We use machine learning and analytics to identify inefficient cell sites that consume high amounts of energy. We then dispatch repair teams to these sites to maintain energy efficiency. 
• Network Decommissioning: We work with engineering teams to identify and decommission older, less efficient network equipment. We look at alternative network architectures to enable us to streamline capacity needs and decommission more equipment to reduce energy and save on operations costs.
• Renewable Energy: We are committed to carbon neutrality across our global operations by 2035. The electricity needed to power the company’s network is AT&T’s largest source of emissions. AT&T is one of the largest purchasers of renewable energy in the U.S., which helps us reduce our carbon footprint and address the global challenge of climate change. For more information, visit our Energy Management issue brief.
• Video Optimizer: Our open-source video optimizer helps developers improve apps’ performance and network efficiency. This tool reduces the amount of traffic carried on networks, reduces the energy needed to run the network equipment that transmits the videos, and reduces the amount of hardware deployed and energy consumed.

Evolving Technologies

Through organizations such as AT&T Labs, the AT&T Chief Data Office (CDO), the AT&T 5G Innovation Studio and the AT&T Intellectual Property Group, we aim to tackle some of the most difficult challenges and opportunities associated with evolving technologies. Some of the world’s best scientists, developers and engineers work at AT&T. Whether in AT&T Labs, in the CDO organization or in other groups, our talent focuses their unique research capabilities and expertise on our network and anything that uses our network. We are working to create advanced technologies that will drive future innovations in AI and automation, software defined networks, customer experience, media analytics and open-source platforms. Our work includes: 

• Open-Source Network Control: Open-source software provides better control and allows us to manage and deploy network services more cost-effectively and efficiently. AT&T Labs relies on “Network AI,” the AT&T framework for open-source efforts that will drive the company’s software defined network. Our core network is entirely under software defined control, as are many non-core elements of our network. This approach allows us to respond rapidly to any surges in network traffic, quickly enable capacity enhancements and promptly address any security concerns.
• Supplier Engagement: Our suppliers add value to our company with innovation and fresh ideas, frequently sponsoring research and working with AT&T Labs alongside AT&T employees. Many of our supplier agreements promote innovation through models of shared value, such as joint intellectual property agreements or shared revenue.
• Data-driven Decision-making: The CDO acts as a catalyst to spread reusable capabilities across AT&T to support greater data-driven decision-making at all levels of the company. We have empowered business managers with self-serve access to “single version of truth” datasets using business intelligence tooling. We are also extending low-/no-code AI creation capabilities across the firm.

Stakeholder Engagement

We engage and collaborate with our communities and industry partners regarding network quality and reliability. Our stakeholder engagement activities are centered on:

• Community Collaboration: We work closely with local communities on all construction activities, including local and state processes for permitting, advance notice and approvals on our infrastructure investments. In addition, AT&T is a founding member of the O-RAN Alliance, which works toward more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. We have participated in several major open-source initiatives, all designed to support openness, visibility and security, maximize speed and accelerate innovation while controlling costs.
• Feedback Channels: If a community expresses concerns about AT&T network investments or activities, the concern or grievance is collected through our state External & Legislative Affairs teams and our Office of the President and reported to the appropriate department for resolution.

AT&T will continue to invest in high-quality 5G and fiber buildouts to provide connectivity to those who need it most and to improve reliability and performance across the network. We will also continue to expand FirstNet, supporting public safety in 2024 and beyond as first responders cope with unprecedented weather events, emergencies and other disasters whenever they occur.