AT&T has completed 53 percent of the buildout for the nationwide public safety broadband service as of the end of the first quarter, Urgent Communications reported Thursday.
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, said during the firm’s Q1 earnings call that efforts to operate FirstNet on the 700 MHz Band 14 spectrum is “running well ahead of schedule†and the company expects to reach 60 percent completion by the end of Q3.
The number of subscribers to the emergency communications network increased by 34 percent to 570K and the number of agencies using the service jumped by 33 percent to 7K.
AT&T aims to increase its bandwidth capacity and offer 5G access to more than 200M people by the end of 2020.