August 30, 2016: Our keynote speaker this week was Pamela Lackey, President of AT&T South Carolina (“AT&T”). As we all know, AT&T is one of the nation’s largest wireless carriers, but Pamela share with us how AT&T is building the network of tomorrow. Essentially, the goal of AT&T is to allow us to watch various content we want, when we want. AT&T recently acquired DirecTV and is the largest paid television provider in the world.
In addition, AT&T has invested more than $810 million invested in its best-in-class wired and wireless networks in South Carolina from 2013-2015. Of which approximately $100 million was invested in the Charleston area. AT&T has made 1,059 upgrades in 2013-2015 including new cell sites, addition of wireless and wired network capacity and new broadband network connections in South Carolina. As of April 29, 2016, 99.7 percent of the population in South Carolina was covered by the AT&T Mobile Broadband network and the AT&T Wireless network. There are approximately 781 Wi-Fi hotspots in South Carolina as of January 13, 2016. Meaning, AT&T customers can stay connected wherever they might be.
Some of the most notable enhancements made by AT&T in 2015 include: the installation of a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) in Charleston; and expansion of wireless HD voice service in numerous areas, including Charleston. Last year, AT&T also announced its plans to expand the availability to ultra-fast speeds through its Gigapower to homes, apartments and small businesses in the Charleston area. AT&T GigaPower offers its fastest Internet speeds over a 100% fiber network to more than 1.6 million locations across 22 major metro areas. Essentially, the GigaPower network let you instantly access the latest online movies, music, games and more and can also improve your experience when connecting to the cloud and videoconferencing, and gives you the speed to power all of your devices. This will give AT&T customers some of the fastest online speeds available anywhere, including the ability to download 25 songs in less than a second, a TV show in three seconds or your favorite HD movie in less than 36 seconds.
Through the Aspire Mentoring Academy, ATT&T employees have mentored 1,305 students in South Carolina in 2015. More than 59,000 hours of personal time given by AT&T employees and retirees in South Carolina to community outreach activities in 2015 – worth more than $1.3 million. Probably no surprise to anyone is that AT&T, the AT&T Foundation and its employees from have contributed more than $2.4 million through various giving programs in South Carolina during 2012 – 2014.
Over the years, AT&T has had a huge impact on the South Carolina job and provide significant economic support to our state. AT&T is one of the largest employers in South Carolina with more than 2,400 AT&T employees working in South Carolina as of June 30, 2016. In addition, more than $116 million was spent on goods and services purchased from suppliers based in South Carolina in 2014. Clearly, this spending supports jobs and economic activity in the state. As of July 8, 2016, AT&T has 202 retail locations in South Carolina, including its company-owned retail stores, authorized dealerships and national retail stores. As for economic support, AT&T has generated more than $140 million in local and state taxes by its operations in South Carolina in 2014.
While fielding questions, Pamela discussed the efforts of AT&T to combat Robocalls, which are currently the largest source of consumer complaints at the FCC and the FTC, the agencies charged with enforcing the “Do Not Call” list. As we all know, there are companies that will intentionally ignore the Do Not Call list disrupt dinner, interrupt family time and provide a persistent source of annoyance to consumers everywhere. These robocallers use technology to evade existing tools designed to screen unwanted and illegal calls. AT&T and others in the industry have been working to address this issue. Specifically, the AT&T CEO has agreed to lead an industry-wide Strike Force, focused on accelerating the development and deployment of new tools for fighting this troubling problem. We can only hope that this technology is developed and deployed sooner rather than later.
— Abe Gutting, Keyway Committee