The carrier has identified the opportunities that its EchoStar spectrum acquisition will enable for the company's legacy network retirement and migration to fiber and FWA services instead.
AT&T has said that its $23 billion acquisition of EchoStar's wireless assets can help the carrier speed up its copper phase-out.
The carrier plans to retire its copper network by 2029 and is amid a major fiber build-out across the U.S., as it aims to deploy fiber to 60 million locations by the same year.
As such, the carrier has identified the opportunities that its EchoStar spectrum acquisition will enable for the company's legacy network retirement and migration to fiber and FWA services instead.
As part of the deal, AT&T will acquire approximately 30 MHz of nationwide 3.45 GHz mid-band spectrum and approximately 20 MHz of nationwide 600 MHz low-band spectrum.
During Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference last week, AT&T noted that the mass market space will benefit quickly from the deal.
"The 3.45 GHz spectrum is spectrum that we can deploy within our network as soon as we get regulatory approval. We have set this deal up such that we can pre-lease it and deploy it with a very fast software upgrade and essentially start using it right away," said Jenifer Robertson, executive VP & general manager of mass markets, AT&T.
"It allows us to accelerate our legacy decommissioning project, that is inside of our footprint, the work that we are doing to lower our cost structure and pull our legacy infrastructure out of the network."
Earlier this year, AT&T agreed to sell a portfolio of Central Offices in an $850 million sale-leaseback deal involving more than 70 properties across the U.S. to private real estate development firm Reign Capital.
The carrier is pushing to retire its copper network in its “wireless-first areas,” locations where AT&T isn't deploying residential fiber.
"Again, moving these customers on to fixed wireless gives us another converged play where we don't already have them on our wireless products," added Robertson.
A key strategy for AT&T's migration to more modern technology, such as Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). FWA is a type of broadband Internet service that use radio signals to connect to a fixed location. Unlike fiber, there are no physical cables.
Robertson said that the acquisition will help the company "lean in to fixed wireless outside of our footprint, and that allows us to compete for price-sensitive customers with fixed wireless and a plus wireless converged play."
"And so it's a bridge to future fiber, anchor the home, migrate those customers to fiber in the future, and grow the relationship to an even more valuable one in the future," she added. "So there are near-term accretive moves that we can make with this spectrum that make it very valuable to us in mass markets, and then there's a long-term play that sets us up for future workloads well into the next decade."
When asked about the progress being made with AT&T's copper migration plans, Robertson said the carrier has made a lot of progress, with the company moving more people to fiber services. Only around three percent of the carrier's customers are using copper.
"So we have worked through quite a bit of backlog, where customers have been on copper legacy products, migrate them to fiber. And at this point, as soon as we build fiber in the neighborhood, we're able to get customers off of that copper, move them over, and as soon as we can build it, we get them off the network," said Robertson.
AT&T hasn't had it all its own way with its push to move away from providing legacy services.
Last year, the state of California denied AT&T’s request to be released from its duties as Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) in the state. AT&T is currently the designated COLR across much of California, meaning it's legally obligated to provide its telephone services to anyone who asks.
The COLR designation is designed to make sure telecom firms don't withdraw from areas completely, or leave citizens cut off from accessing phone networks.