AT&T has plans to start deploying LTE Broadcast technology, also known as LTE Multicast, sometime in 2015, according to a top AT&T executive, Telecompaper.com reported on Aug 15, 2014.

AT&T Chief Strategy Officer John Stankey disclosed the timeline in an appearance at the Oppenheimer Technology, Internet & Communications Conference. "You should expect that you\'ll see us begin to roll out Multicast capabilities as we move through next year," he said. "Initially, we\'ll be doing it on a targeted basis and we\'ll be doing it in some specific areas where we think there\'s immediate deployment."

Stankey added that as AT&T gets more scale and normalizes its relationships with content providers, the carrier wants the "flexibility to use that technology on a broader application."

LTE Multicast is based on evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS), and allows the same content to be sent to a large number of subscribers at the same time, resulting in a more efficient use of network resources.

Until now, AT&T had only disclosed it was "exploring the possibility of offering eMBMS services" using the 700 MHz D and E Block spectrum it acquired from Qualcomm in 2011.