AT&T reports $2.3B MO investment 2008-11

Dallas-based AT&T Inc. has reported it invested more than $2.3 billion in wireless and wireline networks in Missouri from 2008-11.

"The ongoing investment we’re making in Missouri is designed to increase coverage and reliability, and to provide advanced services to our customers," AT&T Vice President and General Manager Nancy Garvey said in a news release.

During 2011, AT&T made roughly 1,825 wireless network upgrades. The release pointed to:

• activating more than 20 new cell sites or towers;
• installing fiber-optic connections to more than 625 cell cites;
• adding capacity or an extra layer of frequency to cell sites, to the tune of an additional 875 layers; and
• upgrading nearly 300 cell sites to provide faster mobile broadband speeds.

AT&T says it is planning thousands of cell site builds or upgrades nationwide, along with the installation of carriers at cell sites to increase spectrum capacity.

Spectrum was at the heart of the issue during the proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA, according to AT&T. In a November Springfield Business Journal story, Mike Haynes, regional manager for AT&T, and John Sontag, Missouri AT&T president, said the growing desire for spectrum space to support 4G long-term evolution service needs led to talks with T-Mobile's parent company, Bonn, Germany-based Deutshe Telekom. The $39 million cash-and-stock bid was canceled in December.

Publicly traded AT&T (NYSE: T), which posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $6.7 billion, ended 2011 with $3.9 billion in earnings, down from $19.9 billion the year before.

As of 11 a.m., the company's stock was trading at $30.06, compared to its 52-week range of $27.27 to $31.94.[[In-content Ad]]