AT&T said Monday it wants to expand its...

AT&T said Monday it wants to expand its U-verse with GigaPower fiber network into 21 additional metro areas, serving an additional 100 cities. The potential expansion areas are: Atlanta, Augusta, Ga., Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Texas, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Greensboro, N.C., Houston, Jacksonville, Fla., Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Tenn., Oakland, Calif., Orlando, Fla., San Antonio, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco and San Jose, Calif. The telco said Monday it has begun negotiations with local governments in the 21 markets, as it previously did in Austin, Texas, and Dallas. AT&T is already offering a 300 Mbps version of the service in Austin and plans to deploy the 1 Gbps service later this year (http://soc.att.com/1jx3TEr). AT&T said it is also continuing “advanced discussions” on deployment of the fiber network in two North Carolina markets -- Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem (CD April 11 p14). The planned network can deliver broadband speeds of up to 1 Gbps and AT&T’s “most advanced TV services,” the telco said. Google has already rolled out fiber service in Kansas City, Kan., and is deploying its network in other cities in the Kansas City metro area and Austin that could overlap with AT&T’s planned network. Other potential areas where Google wants to deploy include Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham and San Jose. AT&T’s announcement “heralds a tipping point: fiber in the Americas is on fire,” said Fiber to the Home Council Americas President Heather Burnett Gold in a statement. “Around the world -- but importantly, here in the U.S. -- we are beginning to see fiber to the home treated not as a novelty, but as vital public and private infrastructure.”