Towers: Read through from AT&T earnings

Research evidence excerpt

Towers: Read through from AT&T earnings

Equity Research

U.S. Communications Infrastructure

22 July 2026

Towers

Read through from AT&T earnings

Below we present quotes from AT&T's 2Q26 conference call

that shed light on future tower demand. In brief,

management articulated growing network U.S. Communications Infrastructure NEUTRAL

requirements (primarily from AI), but also increased flexibility U.S. Communications Infrastructure

to handle traffic growth efficiently. Brendan Lynch, CFA

+1 212 526 9428

brendan.lynch@barclays.com

AI traffic growth - Network needs continue to evolve, and could ultimately result in more BCI, US

intense data traffic, although our channel checks suggest there is not much evidence that AI is

Eileen Gaocreating incremental demand, at least not yet.

+1 212 526 7836

•• "The rise of agentic AI is fundamentally reshaping network traffic, not just in volume, but in eileen.gao@barclays.com

BCI, US

shape, symmetry, and criticality. The proliferation of agentic and autonomous AI workloads

will require networks to sense, decide, and act in near real time. Emerging use cases including Annabelle Ayer

drones, autonomous driving, robotics, and AR glasses will all require ubiquitous, high- +1 212 526 7387

annabelle.ayer@barclays.com performing, uplink-optimized connectivity. Today, industry research shows AI agents generate

up to 450% more total traffic per task than a human performing the same work. Agentic

adoption is projected to drive approximately 9x growth in enterprise traffic and

approximately 7x growth in consumer traffic by 2035. Distribution of AI inference to the edge

necessitates low latency and high bandwidth connectivity to access endpoints. This is why we

believe fiber-enabled network convergence at the edge will create a true competitive