- CTIA and 5G Americas are founding members of the new lobbying organization Spectrum for Broadband Competition
- CTIA and 5G Americas say they’re not focusing on one single spectrum band
- They want to show how consumers are benefiting from fixed wireless access (FWA) competition
CTIA and 5G Americas this week launched Spectrum for Broadband Competition, a new coalition advocating for spectrum policies that favor fixed wireless access (FWA) and not the cable industry.
Their first campaign is titled “End the Cableopoly,” targeting the cable industry’s attempts to “undermine competition from 5G home broadband by starving wireless providers of the spectrum needed to expand access and help close the digital divide.” Cable companies are carving up the country into “regional monopolies,” resulting in poor service and wide gaps in coverage, the coalition asserts.
Them’s fighting words, according to NCTA – The Internet and Television Association, which represents Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, among others.
“Big Mobile’s sham coalition is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the fact that today’s wireless robber barons want to advance policies that will allow them to hoard more public spectrum for their exclusive use, denying access to other innovators and wrecking national security in the process,” NCTA said in a statement.
But that’s not all. “It clearly galls Big Mobile that the cable industry is rapidly bringing real choice and savings in wireless service … Instead of misleading the public, these companies should focus less on false attacks and more on building out the rural areas in their ‘Swiss cheese’ 5G networks,” NCTA added.
Ouch.
Actually, the wireless industry has a good track record of putting spectrum to work and making it more efficient, said Nick Ludlum, SVP and chief communications officer at CTIA.
“Putting spectrum to work is something that we do,” he said. On the other hand, “warehousing spectrum, like the CBRS spectrum, that’s really what they do” at the cable companies, he said.
They’re pretty transparent about that, too, regularly acknowledging during cable earnings calls that their MVNO relationships are serving them well and they don’t need to build out using Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, he noted.
Both Comcast and Charter use Verizon’s network to sell mobile services under their own brands via MVNO arrangements, but they also own licenses for CBRS, which is composed of smaller markets than the larger geographic licenses that wireless carriers prefer. CBRS also follows a shared spectrum model, which the wireless carriers don't want to see applied elsewhere.
Why now?
The mobile and cable industries have battled over spectrum for years now, so the question is: Why launch this new coalition now?
Is it because of CBRS, which is the subject of potential rule changes at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), some of which would favor big wireless? Is it about the lower 3 GHz, which is mired in a fight with its current occupant, the Department of Defense (DoD)? Or something else, like cable’s intentions to double down on wireless?
It’s not really about one single thing, including the Spectrum for the Future lobbying organization that cable companies launched a couple years ago, according to Ludlum.
“I don't think CBRS is a huge part of this, to be honest. It is a part of it, but it's not really the purpose of the coalition,” except in so far as cable is out there making claims about CBRS that don't really match what they're doing with their own spectrum holdings, he said.
“One thing we really wanted to do with this coalition is to show why competition is so important in the home broadband space, how people are benefiting, how more people can benefit and really elevate those voices,” he said.
Viet Nguyen, who quietly took over as president of 5G Americas in December with the retirement of long-time association president Chris Pearson, said part of the reason is the change in administration and the fact that Washington, D.C., is going through a “refresh,” to put it mildly.
Plus, “we now have the data from the last three years of the success of 5G fixed wireless access, or 5G home broadband. Those numbers really sort of leap out at you,” he said. “It’s starting to look like a trend.”
He’s referring to the incredible FWA growth at T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, with T-Mobile particularly standing out, having been crowned the fastest-growing internet provider in the U.S. a few years ago. At its Capital Markets Day last year, T-Mobile upped its wireless broadband target to 12 million by the end of 2028, up from its previous target of 7 million-8 million in 2025.
Wireless FWA broadband also beats cable when it comes to net promoter scores (NPS). Just ask Recon Analytics founder Roger Entner. His firm tracks NPS and last year declared that Verizon and T-Mobile’s net promoter scores for FWA absolutely demolished the scores of Comcast and Charter for their hybrid fiber coax (HFC) broadband services.
But wait a minute. While cable is losing broadband customers, isn’t it wooing mobile customers to their extremely low-cost services? In Q3 2024, Comcast reported 307,000 net additions on its MVNO service, for a total of 7.8 million. Charter topped that, reaching 10 million mobile lines six years after launching its MVNO service.
There again, Ludlum said that’s another illustration of how the wireless industry is making competition possible. It’s the wireless networks, namely Verizon’s, that are powering the cable MVNOs.
“It’s great there’s a competitive mobile industry. Let’s make sure there’s a competitive home broadband industry,” he said.
What about the lower 3 GHz?
While we’re talking about spectrum, Fierce wondered if the prospects of getting lower 3 GHz spectrum for licensed wireless purposes look any better now that President Trump signaled his intent to send Elon Musk and his cost cutters to the DoD. After all, CTIA has been hammering on the lower 3 GHz for a while now.
It remains to been how the DoD budget cuts impact spectrum, but there are moves in Congress and elsewhere that are cause for optimism, Ludlum said. “As you look across the government, you see people in the right positions who have a track record of making real progress on this area and so that gives us optimism,” he said.
Fierce asked New Street Research policy analyst and former FCC official Blair Levin if he thinks budget cuts would make a difference in the DoD’s spectrum situation.
Levin said he’s skeptical that Trump and Musk are serious about applying the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) methodology to the DoD.
“If you cut the DoD budget, then where will the money for relocating radar come from? As the DoD estimates of the relocation costs are greater, I think, than the estimated auction revenues, then you either have to challenge the DoD estimates or somehow hide that the transaction might cost the government money rather than providing new government revenues,” he said.
“How does cutting DoD expenses square with new projects like the Iron Dome? I see no signs that the DoD is moving off its position, but it is a battle worth watching as the outcome is far from certain,” he concluded.
The business case for 5G has eluded the industry for years, but we may be turning a corner thanks to the promises of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), 5G Advanced and private 5G networks for the enterprise. Register today for Fierce Network's free 5G virtual summit here and mark your calendars for March 25-26, 2025.