T-Mobile's CEO said that its only used 60% of its 2.5 GHz spectrum for 5G so far
One analyst told us he thinks that 35% of the spectrum being used is for FWA and 65% is for mobile
The CEO noted that T-Mobile has barely deployed its C-Band spectrum
Despite the furor over T-Mobile’s shares after CEO Mike Sievert’s comments about their fourth quarter earnings at the UBS Global Media conference Monday and how they may — or may not — have been misinterpreted, the wireless chief actually had plenty of other issues to talk about at the event, particularly his company’s wireless spectrum and how that might be used in the future.
Sievert talked about the use and availability of its midband spectrum, both 2.5 GHz and C-Band, at the event. T-Mobile acquired 2.5 GHz spectrum nationwide through its acquisition of Sprint in 2020 and it won many more 2.5 GHz licenses at auction in August 2022 and finally switched on in March 2024. T-Mobile also acquired C-Band licenses (3.7 to 4.2 GHz) at an auction in 2021, although far less than either AT&T or Verizon.
Recon analyst Daryl Schoolar said that “the majority” of T-Mobile’s midband spectrum is 2.5 GHz rather than C-Band.
Sievert even noted at the UBS event that the operator has barely started deploying the C-Band spectrum it does have. “We have lots of spectrum we haven’t put into the fight yet,” he commented. “We’ve only deployed 60% overall of our [2.5 GHz] midband spectrum onto 5G, we have lots of 4G refarming still to go.”
The CEO noted that 80% of T-Mobile’s customer base now use 5G phones or other devices. Indeed, 5G usage other than phones is becoming crucial to T-Mobile as its fixed wireless access (FWA) home internet service continues to grow. The operator recently predicted at its Capital Markets Day that its FWA offering would pass 12 million connections by 2028.
“The question is can we go past 12 million?” Sievert asked. “It’s too soon to say,”
“Our business model for fixed wireless focuses on fallow capacity,” the CEO elucidated. “A network we built principally for mobile, it was paid for by mobile and we find pockets all over the country where no normal amount of mobile usage will take up our capacity and only in those places do we approve an applicant for home broadband.”
As an aside here, your correspondent should note that he has been offered T-Mobile’s home internet service in Brooklyn, New York. So the program is clearly not just relegated to the boondocks.
“T-Mobile is using a great deal of their mid-band capacity for FWA,” noted Mobile Experts analyst Joe Madden in an email to Fierce. “I calculate that about 35% of data flowing thru the T-Mobile network is on FWA and 65% on mobile.
“There are some new apps coming,” the analyst noted. “Such as AI on smartphones and others which will stretch the capacity of the uplink in the network, so the balance of FWA and mobile data will become an issue for the operators in the next three years,” Madden concluded.