AT&T said Tuesday that it will expand its 1-Gig-capable “GigaPower” network to parts of Overland Park, Kan., a commitment that comes about a month after the Kansas City suburb approved agreements that give Google Fiber the go ahead to build its network there as well.
“Overland Park is proud to be the first city in Kansas and the metropolitan Kansas City area to have the AT&T GigaPower network,” said Overland Park Mayor Carl Gerlach, in a statement. “The memorandum of understanding between AT&T and the city demonstrates our commitment to allow for fair and equitable competition that benefits consumers.”
AT&T said specific locations of availability and pricing for Overland Park market will be announced at a later date. The telco said it’s also considering other nearby cities and towns in Kansas and Missouri, including Independence, Kansas City, Leawood, and Shawnee as candidate municipalities for the GigaPower service.
Time Warner Cable and Comcast are among the incumbent cable operators that are serving those areas. Google Fiber is already building or has approval to build in most of them.
Expand its U-verse footprint to more areas of Kansas. AT&T already offers U-verse service in Hutchinson, Kansas City, Lawrence, Manhattan, Topeka, and Wichita, and said it plans to expand that footprint to include more areas of Kansas.
AT&T’s plans for Overland Park follow other recent commitments and current rollouts for its new fiber-based platform.
AT&T has launched GigaPower services in parts of Austin, Texas, and expects to start deployments in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area this summer.
Other areas where AT&T has approvals to deploy GigaPower include Charlotte, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Cary, Winston-Salem and Durham, N.C.; San Antonio, Texas; and Nashville, Tenn. AT&T is also exploring an expansion of GigaPower to as many as 100 additional cities across 25 markets. AT&T has proposed to expand GigaPower to an additional 2 million customers as a condition of its pending acquisition of DirecTV.
