AT&T’s recent focus on simplifying its operations around fiber and 5G is providing the carrier with a growing base of connectivity options that enterprises are tapping into as part of their broader digital transformation efforts.

Alicia Dietsch, SVP of business marketing for AT&T, told SDxCentral that those two connectivity methods are, at varying degrees, powering new enterprise use cases, with the specific decision based on an enterprise’s needs.

“I don't know that we've even completely cracked open in terms of what the future is going to look like,” Dietsch said. “Will we find over time that companies in some cases actually care far less about whether that connection is fiber or wireless, or do they just care that it's connected, it's highly reliable, highly available, highly secure, and that it's a good value for them and it creates the flexibility they need? I'm not saying that's the today scenario, but I do think, particularly in enterprise where the drive for flexibility, efficiency and future-proofing their choices is so critical, those kinds of things are in the consideration set for us today.”

[caption id="attachment_133146" align="alignnone" width="516"] Alicia Dietsch, SVP of business marketing for AT&T[/caption]

Dietsch stated that fiber remains the primary choice in most situations due to economics, reliability and capacity, with 5G continuing to show promise as a supporting connection character. She explained that 5G-based wireless connectivity can meet the use-case needs in some instances, but that it’s still not set to take over as a primary connection method to handle all enterprise use-case needs.

“I think we're still working through those use cases,” Dietsch said. “And I think we're finding great examples with manufacturing and automotive.”

One of those growing use cases is with 5G-powered fixed-wireless access (FWA) services. Dietsch noted these services are increasingly becoming a fallback option for enterprise customers, including for use as an alternative connection method for SD-WAN services or as an “interim” high-speed broadband connection for fiber.

“In the right situations we would advance FWA as a recommended solution to the customer,” Dietsch said.

Dietsch’s comments echoed those from AT&T CEO John Stankey, who recently touted the carrier’s FWA product as gaining traction in the enterprise space and allowing the carrier to trim costs from other parts of its business.

“I like the product of the business segment and we’re certainly having some success with that,” Stankey said. “It’s going to be key for us in certain parts of our consumer segment as we move through the next phase of our cost-reduction efforts. It is a means for us to begin finding a good catch to shut down other infrastructure and still serve customers.

"We will use it surgically and selectively — that will help us both on the cost side as well as [for] retaining valuable customers. [We’re looking for] where we think we can have the right kind of network capacity that will support the product going forward.”

This FWA expansion could also spill into increased enterprise support. Stankey noted that consumer-focused FWA usage has been growing substantially based on “households that tend to be pretty bandwidth-intensive, doing a lot of entertainment streaming, growing consumption at 30% and 40% per year.”

“You don’t see those kind of dynamics showing up in some of the small business and lower-end of the midsize market, and fixed wireless is a solution for those customers that can use that kind of service, especially when they need to marry it with mobile services to complement their business. [It] is a very attractive place for us to be thinking about using the product and the infrastructure, and I like the yields on that,” Stankey said.

Dietsch explained that some of that infrastructure includes AT&T’s approximately dozen edge zones that live in a connected location near a hyperscaler data center and can be managed and controlled from a centralized resource. This allows those zones to be physically closer to end users to support low-latency use cases and they can share compute and storage resources as needed with that hyperscale infrastructure.

“What we're starting to see is people opening the toolbox a bit and taking different tools out to try; whether it's multi-access edge computing (MEC), whether they're using individual private 5G components, whether we're exploring a truly hybrid public network. I’d probably put these a little more in the continued experimentation stage, the starting-to-scale space, because I think it says much about making sure that there's enough infrastructure deployed to be able to use it extensively,” Dietsch said.

Dietsch is more cautious on the private 5G network, noting it’s still early days and with deployment and management models still needing to be figured out.

“I'd squarely put it a little more in the continued experimentation, starting-to-scale space because I think it’s as much about making sure that there's enough infrastructure deployed to be able to use it extensively,” Dietsch said.

The sentiment is also playing out in the market as initial enthusiasm over the private 5G space has hit a trough of reality.

ABI Research recently stated that more than 1,000 private networks have been deployed worldwide, but added that the number of announced networks has slowed, which is “a good sign for the private networks market.”

“Enterprises are beginning to see the deployment of private cellular connectivity as a competitive advantage and therefore do not want to talk about it too openly. Which is important as the market moves from the experimental phase toward commercializing private network deployments,” Leo Gergs, ABI Research senior analyst, recently wrote to SDxCentral, adding “the telco industry urgently needs to deliver on promises made to the enterprise community now. Otherwise, enterprise 5G will enter the history books as the technology that always overpromised and underdelivered.”

While these different models work their way through the enterprise ecosystem, Dietsch explained that it remains important for AT&T to stay focused on results and not get tied down to a specific connectivity model. "It's about being experts who understand what our business customers face," she said.