T-Mobile still has 40% of its 2.5GHz mid-band holdings to deploy
When T-Mobile bought Sprint in 2020 for $26 billion, it didn't go through with the acquisition because it wanted Sprint's wireless operations. Nope. What T-Mobile, then run by CEO John Legere, had in mind was something different. What Legere wanted was Sprint's hoard of 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum for its 5G build-out. Unlike Verizon and AT&T, T-Mobile saw how mid-band spectrum could be perfect for 5G.
While not as fast as mmWave high-band airwaves, mid-band travels longer distances than mmWave high-band but is faster than low-band spectrum. AT&T and Verizon changed their plans and acquired $68 billion worth of mid-band C-band spectrum licenses in an FCC auction. T-Mobile eventually added some additional 2.5GHz spectrum to its holdings after participating in an FCC auction in 2022. The carrier didn't get control of that spectrum until December 2023 after the 5G SALE Act was signed by President Joe Biden.
T-Mobile wasn't allowed to immediately use the 2.5GHz spectrum it won at the FCC auction because Congress had allowed the FCC's auction authority to expire. The bill signed by Biden returned the FCC's auction authority to the regulatory agency allowing T-Mobile to take control of the airwaves. T-Mobile still has plenty of 2.5GHz spectrum left to work with according to current CEO Mike Sievert who revealed this during the recent UBS Global Media and Communications Conference.
At the event, T-Mobile's top executive said that the company has deployed only 60% of its total holdings of 2.5GHz spectrum leaving plenty of prime mid-band spectrum that T-Mobile can use to finish its 4G refarming. Sievert says that 80% of T-Mobile's customer base employs a 5G phone or other devices. Daryl Schoolar, an analyst at Recon, notes that T-Mobile's 2.5GHz airwaves and not its C-band holdings make up the majority of its mid-band spectrum.
"Our business model for fixed wireless focuses on fallow capacity. 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."-Mike Sievert, CEO, T-Mobile
Speaking of T-Mobile's 5G service, Sievert says that its fixed wireless access (FWA) home internet service will exceed 12 million subscribers by 2028. Mobile Experts analyst Joe Madden told Fierce Wireless that T-Mobile is using much of its mid-band capacity on FWA, He says that 35% of data riding on T-Mobile's network is for FWA while the remaining 65% is for mobile.
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