How Much Fixed Wireless Progress in U.S. Market?

T-Mobile has fixed wireless available to 30 million U.S. households in April 2021. T-Mobile now has perhaps 646,000 fixed wireless supplied home broadband accounts. But T-Mobile projects reaching seven million to eight million fixed wireless customers by 2025 or so. 

Verizon likely had 15 million fixed wireless passings by the end of 2021, with a goal of passing 30 million households by the end of 2023 and 50 million by the end of 2025. 

So far, Verizon has 150,000 home broadband customers using fixed wireless. 

Some believe fixed wireless will represent about nine percent of the U.S. installed base of home broadband accounts by about 2026. 

If the typical U.S. home broadband account generates $600 a year in revenue, then 10.43 million lines represents $6.26 billion in annual service revenues. 

And since most of that revenue is earned in a near zero-sum market, a gain of $1 billion by any provider also corresponds to losses by another provider of about the same amount. 

For a firm such as T-Mobile, with zero market share, that is a significant opportunity. For a firm such as Verizon, whose fixed network passes only about 18 million homes passed by its Fios home broadband network. But Verizon expects to pass as many as 50 million homes using fixed wireless by about 2025. 

Veizon has perhaps seven million (closer to 6.7 million, likely)  Fios home broadband accounts, generating about $1814 to $1895 annual revenue per account, including voice and other services such as subscription television, on annual revenues of about $12.7 billion. 

So fixed wireless revenue per account would seem to be far lower than a Fios account.  

But fixed wireless already represents at least 41 percent of Verizon home broadband passings and will eventually be the dominant home broadband capability possessed by Verizon. By 2025 fixed wireless could represent 70 percent of the locations where Verizon can sell home broadband. 

So even if fixed wireless remains a single-digit percentage of the home broadband installed base, it still represents a primary way some providers will try to take market share from other providers. 

T-Mobile and Verizon are the biggest of possible winners. Cable TV home broadband providers stand to lose the most, simply because they have 70 percent of the installed base.