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Fixed Wireless Is the 5G Killer App: Verizon CEO

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is emerging as the killer app for 5G, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said Tuesday at a J.P. Morgan financial conference. The company added almost 400,000 FWA subscribers in its last quarter (see 2304250073), he noted: “That's…

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definitely the key application that's not only for consumers, it's also for businesses.” 4G is in the maturity stage now in the U.S., Vestberg said. “5G is coming into the second phase where you actually start doing 5G-advanced and actually start taking advantage of all the 5G out there,” he said. With 5G, Verizon can connect millions of devices per square kilometer, “which was never the case with 4G,” he said. Verizon is working to build momentum among low-end consumers, Vestberg said: “We still do phenomenally well in the high end. We did not do so well in the low end on the postpaid last year.” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said at the same conference his company remains focused on being “the insurgent.” T-Mobile “has a culture that is hard to replicate, where every single one of us wakes up every morning hungry, unsatisfied,” he said. Sievert said halfway through Q2, T-Mobile continues to add postpaid subscribers at or above the pace it set last year. “We continue to have a methodical march to build market share” focused on markets where the carrier is “underpenetrated,” he said: “We have years of room to run on this …. We're not trying to grab it all this year. We're trying to methodically get after it.”