AT&T celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first phone call this week by announcing plans to invest $250 billion over the next five years to ensure its vast communications network can support AI and other evolving technologies.
Artificial intelligence, autonomous technologies and cloud computing are each making demands on a communications network unrecognizable from the single copper-wired one Alexander Graham Bell used to place the first phone call on March 10, 1876.
“There are all these demands that are coming into the network that require ubiquitous connectivity,” AT&T’s Jenifer Robertson, who leads the company’s mobility and consumer businesses, told the USA TODAY Network.
What to know about AT&T hiring spree
AT&T plans to go on a hiring spree this year, adding thousands of jobs to its workforce of 110,000 employees. The company boasts the nation’s largest unionized workforce in the telecommunications industry. And just 5% of AT&T jobs require a four-year college degree.
“We’re looking at people who are willing to be AI native and lean into the technology,” Robertson said. “And that’s another space where you don’t necessarily have to have a college degree. You just have to have a technical aptitude and be willing to learn.”
Employees will train and work in the communities where they live.
“If you have technicians, if you have service reps, if you have the jobs in the communities that allow innovation to thrive there, then you’ve got the heart of the modern life,” said Robertson. “And we’ve got these jobs. We’re hiring thousands of technicians this year alone.”
The investment will also go toward strengthening AT&T’s FirstNet system for first responders. In 1968, AT&T created the nation’s first 911 emergency system.
AT&T’s investment plan includes accelerating deployment of fiber, 5G home internet, wireless and satellite service across the U.S. to keep pace with 21st Century innovations, company officials say.
Bell might not recognize the company he ushered into existence. Last year, three times more calls than texts crisscrossed its network.
On the 150th anniversary of Bell’s invention, the company plans to celebrate several other milestones, including the first trans-continental telephone call between New York and San Francisco in 1915 and President Richard Nixon’s 1969 phone call to astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA TODAY Network’s New York State team. He’s won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that’s included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at tzambito@lohud.com
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: AT&T investing $250B to keep pace with AI. New details on hiring spree
Reporting by Thomas C. Zambito, New York State Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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