AT&T CEO John Stankey this week outlined plans to reach more than 50 million fiber locations by 2029.

Stankey made the comments this week during the company's analyst and investor day.

During the event, he said that around 45 million of those fiber passings will be from "organic deployments," while more than five million will be via its fiber JV, Gigapower, with investment company BlackRock.

At present, the company is nearing 29 million passings, which it's set to hit by the end of the year. The carrier currently serves more than eight million fiber customers.

Stankey stated the importance of the company carrying out its fiber deployment, stating a higher demand for data.

“If we look at data consumption over the next five years, we expect that’s going to increase about 80 percent," he said.

AT&T recently struck four new agreements with commercial open-access providers to boost its fiber build. Those partners are Boldyn Networks, wholesale fiber developer and operator, Digital Infrastructure Group, PRIME FiBER, and Ubiquity.

In October, AT&T signed a multi-year purchase agreement worth more than $1 billion with Corning Incorporated.

AT&T also provided an update on its legacy copper network, noting that it expects to retire the network across a "large majority of its wireline footprint by the end of 2029."

The carrier also said it plans to return more than $40bn to shareholders over the next three years through dividends and share repurchases.

AT&T's fiber push represents that of a growing fiber battle between the country's three big telcos.

Verizon is set to acquire fiber provider Frontier Communications for $20 billion as part of plans to bolster its own offering. Frontier shareholders, despite many publicly rejecting the bid, agreed to approve the deal last month.

T-Mobile has also pushed the boat out on fiber, first through the acquisition of Lumos Networks as part of a joint venture (JV) with EQT Infrastructure in April. Then in July, the company agreed to set up a JV with investment firm KKR to acquire fiber Internet service provider Metronet.