AT&T CEO John Stankey today said the effective six-week delay on C-band spectrum availability for the carrier’s 5G network doesn’t significantly impact the carrier's strategy or momentum in the space.

“When you deploy an air interface like 5G, it’s with you a very long time,” he said at Citi’s Apps Economy Conference, according to a transcript. “A couple of weeks here and a couple of weeks there at the front end of this isn’t” going to change much in the context of how networks are built and managed.

AT&T now plans to reach at least 70 million people with mid-band 5G service by the end of 2022. And following a shedding of misbegotten media assets, AT&T effectively doubled its mid-band 5G deployment plans to reach 200 million people by the end of 2023.

Verizon, the largest winning licensee of C-band spectrum auctioned in early 2021, this week said it would cover 100 million people with mid-band 5G service on January 19. Following that, Verizon plans to increase mid-band 5G coverage to 175 million people in 2023.

If those numbers hold, AT&T will enter 2024 with the second-largest mid-band 5G network in the U.S., behind T-Mobile, which ended 2021 with 200 million people covered by mid-band spectrum thanks in part to the Sprint merger. 

AT&T’s swift reorganization as a pure connectivity provider, an effort Stankey recently described as a move into “the golden age of connectivity,” centers on expansion efforts spanning its wireless and fiber networks.

The carrier’s mid-band deployment will be more deliberate, flowing to markets as different troves of C-band spectrum become clear and available for its use, he explained. “As you think about how you deploy, you want to make sure that you’re using the right electronics at the right time to be on the tower once, as opposed to multiple times,” Stankey added.

“As we move through the middle of this year, I think you’ll see us hit our stride on how we get the right kind of pervasive coverage using a collection of mid-band spectrum assets,” he said.

This effort will get underway as AT&T becomes a more focused business, with more compressed management structures to allow for quicker decision making and agility, Stankey added.

AT&T’s emphasis on mobility and fiber also puts it in a better position for what Stankey expects to be a shift in industry structure, namely how and where individuals and businesses access communications services and the internet.

“Customers don't necessarily love the notion of having to make a decision to buy one form of connectivity from one company and another form of connectivity from another,” Stankey said.

He also contends AT&T is entering that era of shifting market dynamics with “more fiber infrastructure than anybody else” and “a more balanced portfolio at the low end of the market in the consumer space and at the top end of the market in business networking.”

AT&T’s account management infrastructure, consulting expertise, and business support services should also serve it well as managed wireless networks, or private networks, become more broadly adopted among large enterprises, according to Stankey. 

Despite the lag in wireless carriers’ return on investment in 5G, Stankey remains convinced greater opportunities will unfold, adding that the same questions dogged 4G LTE in its early days. 

“Are wireless networks as effective and as resilient as what you’re accustomed to when you sit in your living room or when you’re at your desk inside an office building? The answer is not yet,” Stankey said. “We’re going to see a whole nother decade of innovation that’s built on the back of these networks.”