AT&T announced its partnership with Frontier Communications to enhance the coverage of fiber-optic connectivity to large enterprise customers.

The multi-year agreement with Frontier Communications will also speed up the deployment of AT&T’s 5G mobility network.

AT&T is building out additional fiber across its wired footprint and plans to reach about 2.5 million incremental customer locations passed by the end of 2021 and 30 million locations by the end of 2025.

AT&T’s business fiber network enables high-speed broadband to over 2.5 million U.S. business customer locations as of September 30, 2021. Nationwide, more than 9 million business customer locations are within 1,000 feet of AT&T fiber.

Frontier’s strategy is to Build Gigabit America to pass 10 million locations by the end of 2025. Frontier aims to make fiber available to 600,000 new locations in 2021, resulting in approximately 4 million fiber locations passed by the end of the year.

AT&T will utilize Frontier’s fiber network to reach enterprises in Frontier’s service territories reaching 25 states. AT&T will use Frontier’s network to strengthen deployment of the 5G network. In addition, AT&T will tap Frontier’s Ethernet network to boost connectivity between cell towers and the core network as part of the deal.

“With Frontier building out its own fiber network where we are not building, we’ll be able to work together to provide large business customers with the high-speed, low-latency data connectivity they need to grow and thrive,” said Scott Mair, President, Network Engineering and Operations, AT&T.

Mike Shippey, Frontier’s Executive Vice President of Business and Wholesale, said: “As part of this deal, we’ll use our expanding fiber network to provide AT&T high-speed connections for enterprise customers and the expansion of its 5G mobile network across our markets.”