GigaPower is getting a big expansion, but getting the best price means allowing AT&T took look over your shoulder while you surf the web.
It’s a big week for gigabit Internet. AT&T recently announced that its GigaPower Internet service would reach another 38 metropolitan markets across the U.S. Two of those locations—Los Angeles and West Palm Beach—are already live. The rest of the regions will receive their service in the coming months.
AT&T says its eventual plan is to have its fiber network with up to 1 gigabit per second speeds reach 14 million homes and businesses in the U.S. AT&T promised to deliver gigabit fiber to 12.5 million customer locations as part of its deal to acquire DirecTV.
Here’s the list of new AT&T GigaPower locations. AT&T says GigaPower will only cover select locations in each market.
- Alabama: Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery
- Arkansas: Fort Smith/Northwest Arkansas and Little Rock
- California: Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose
- Florida: Pensacola and West Palm Beach
- Georgia: Augusta
- Indiana: Indianapolis
- Kansas: Wichita
- Kentucky: Louisville
- Louisiana: Baton Rouge, Shreveport-Bossier, Jefferson Parish region and the Northshore
- Mississippi: Jackson
- Missouri: St. Louis
- Michigan: Detroit
- Nevada: Reno
- North Carolina: Asheville
- Ohio: Cleveland and Columbus
- Oklahoma: Oklahoma City and Tulsa
- South Carolina: Charleston, Columbia and Greenville
- Tennessee: Memphis
- Texas: El Paso and Lubbock
- Wisconsin: Milwaukee
The chance to get gigabit fiber is a great opportunity, but you’ll want to be careful about choosing AT&T. To get the best possible price for GigaPower you have to agree to AT&T’s Internet Preferences offering, which costs your privacy. Internet Preferences is marketing speak for allowing AT&T to monitor your web browsing and search history in order to “tailor ads and offers to your interests.”
Those ads may come to you online, via email, or through regular mail. AT&T says it doesn’t sell your personal information to anyone. Nevertheless, it is keeping a history of your online activity all for the “added benefit” of a cheaper price and better ads.
If you must choose AT&T’s GigaPower with Internet Preferences, one way around its web monitoring is to use a virtual private network (VPN) at all times when connecting to the Internet at home.
AT&T GigaPower pricing with Internet Preferences typically ranges from $70 to $150 per month depending on the bundle you choose.