T-Mobile and AT&T Predict That Fixed Wireless Is 'Here to Stay'
Fixed wireless access (FWA) isn't a temporary product "but something that's here to stay," as improving mobile technology means more "fallow capacity" that T-Mobile can use, COO Srinivasan Gopalan said Thursday as the carrier announced quarterly results. His comments came a day after AT&T told analysts that it plans to beef up its FWA service starting next year using EchoStar's 3.45 GHz band spectrum. Cable ISPs have said they expect to see FWA competition ebbing as wireless carriers deploy their spectrum more for mobile uses (see 2501310005).
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For the quarter, T-Mobile said it added 560,000 broadband subscribers, up 34% from the same quarter a year earlier. The figure included 506,000 FWA and 54,000 fiber subscribers. It ended the quarter with 8.9 million broadband subscribers, including 8 million FWA subscribers, versus 6 million broadband subscribers the same quarter a year earlier. T-Mobile also added 755,000 fiber subscribers during the quarter from its Metronet acquisition in July (see 2507240027).
The company said it expects to end the year with 130,000 additional fiber subscribers -- up from the 100,000 it previously projected. It also saw growth in the most recent quarter in postpaid wireless subscribers versus the same quarter in 2024. Its total subscriber base at the end of the quarter was 140 million, up from 127.5 million year over year, it added.
Gopalan said residential broadband is an attractive market, with customers getting an expensive yet inferior product from incumbents, and fiber and fixed wireless are the routes into it. T-Mobile's fiber strategy is to "go after specific places where we're confident that the economics will work for us." So far, the carrier has deployed fiber in locations where it's either the first fiber operator or where it can set up joint ventures that let it "be capital-light."
Andre Almeida, T-Mobile's president of growth and emerging businesses, said that in the past two years, the carrier's FWA speeds have gone up 50% even as it doubled the customer base. "This is clearly ... a very sustainable product that we see is here for the long run."
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the prices in coming spectrum auctions likely won't be as stratospheric as they were in 2021's C-band auction. The costs are driven by supply and demand, and "we see a lot of supply coming." They're currently high due to low supply, as well as the "once-in-a-generation sort of existential threat" that T-Mobile's competitors faced in the C-band auction. Prices have stayed elevated since then but "will probably change over time," he added.
In a call with analysts Wednesday after AT&T announced its latest quarterly results, CEO John Stankey said the quarter was the company's best for broadband additions in eight years, and it has more than doubled its fiber customer base in five years.
Stankey said the carrier will use the spectrum licenses that it plans to buy from EchoStar (see 2508260005) to boost 5G wireless performance and grow its Internet Air FWA service more quickly. AT&T started deploying the 3.45 GHz spectrum under a short-term spectrum manager lease, with those midband licenses to be deployed in cellsites covering about 66% of the U.S. population by mid-November. That would let it expand the availability of Internet Air next year, Stankey said.
AT&T reported that it added 288,000 fiber subscribers and 270,000 Internet Air subscribers during the most recent quarter. It said it expects its $5.8 billion purchase of Lumen's consumer business, announced in May (see 2505210078), to be wrapped up in early 2026.
In a note last week, MoffettNathanson questioned whether the U.S. can sustain three carriers. Verizon's residential growth is "meaningfully decelerating," it said, due at least in part to the company's position as one of two or even three FWA providers in a given market. Citing Opensignal data, MoffettNathanson said about 80% of U.S. households have at least one FWA option available. There are more markets served by two FWA providers than there are served by just one, while 13% of U.S. households are served by three FWA providers. That availability is expected to grow, at least in markets where the wireless carriers lack fiber, it said.