AT&T (NYSE: T) may have asked for another extension to complete its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV), but when it ultimately does complete the deal it plans to bring its 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service to 11.7 million customer locations.

"With approval of the transaction, AT&T will deploy FTTP so that its FTTP footprint will include a total of 11.7 million customer locations (the "Build Plan")," wrote AT&T in an FCC filing. "This Build Plan will be completed within four years after the merger's closing."

During this four-year period, AT&T will provide the FCC with ongoing progress reports on the status of its "Build Plan." These reports will show that the locations it extends FTTP service to fulfill the Build Plan were not funded with Connect America Fund (CAF) grants.

Six months after the deal closes, AT&T will submit the first progress report on its Build Plan to the FCC, followed by reports 90 days after each anniversary of the merger's closing.

This 11.17 million FTTP buildout goal is more than the initial plan it revealed last June to upgrade 2 million homes to the fiber-based Gigapower broadband service, while expanding overall broadband coverage overall to 13 million locations.

The telco announced an initiative in April 2014 to expand its fiber network to up to 100 of what it calls candidate cities and municipalities nationwide, including 21 new major metropolitan areas.

In the meantime, the service provider has been aggressively announcing new markets nearly every week about where it will bring its 1 Gbps service next.

Only days after AT&T released news of further deployments in the Dallas-Ft. Worth and Chicago areas, the telco announced it would provide 1 Gbps service in the Florida market. Similar to its planned rollout in Chicago, AT&T will compete head-to-head with Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) for both Internet and pay-TV subscribers with its U-verse with Gigapower service. It also rolled out service in the Charlotte, N.C., area earlier this month.

This latest expansion brings the number of cities where AT&T offers its GigaPower service to 14, with four more cities slated to receive the service.

For more:

- see this FCC filing (.pdf)

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