Stankey says AI workloads in hybrid cloud environments are raising enterprise demand for capacity and managed, low-latency networks, with robotics likely to add more.
If you're doing inference, you need quicker response times, and people want that performance, and they're doing more of it, so they just need more sheer capacity, and that's part of what's driving the lift.
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Stankey says AT&T's dense fiber near data centers positions it as a leader in AI-grade connectivity, with hyperscalers like AWS and Microsoft as customers.
Over 90% of mapped U.S. data centers are within 10 mi of our fiber, and over 80% are within 1 mi. This is one of the reasons why the nation's leading hyperscalers are working with AT&T to support their rapidly growing high-capacity connectivity needs.
Stankey argues fiber-plus-wireless convergence is the most durable customer proposition and hard to beat.
Where there is a motivation to invest in fiber, it is going to be really hard for people to beat the consolidated value proposition of fiber and wireless, especially as the technology matures and the service capabilities around it mature to allow less friction for a customer.
Stankey sees LEO satellites as ideal for rural coverage while expecting fixed wireless to eventually peak and decline as fiber wins.
I think LEO constellations are fantastic for delivering bandwidth to rural areas, and they may well be the most efficient and effective way to get bandwidth into less densely populated areas moving forward.
Stankey downplays the threat of new satellite-mobile entrants, saying building a scaled converged network takes many years and huge investment.
I would not over-rotate on what I would call one carrier of low-band spectrum. I mean, let us put this in perspective. In our scaled network, we run, depending on the metro, somewhere between 6-8 carriers of low-band spectrum.
Stankey believes AI agents will not harm AT&T, as customers will control agent authorization and good products will prevail.
I think over the long haul, put good products out there, treat people well, it will be fine for our business. We will have accretion of new customers who find us who would not have found us otherwise.