2.5-GHz Assets are Key for T-Mobile Home Broadband

Despite all the arguments about the value of 5G at the moment, T-Mobile has one concrete example of why 5G helps T-Mobile customers, even when they are not presently 5G users. 

As Wi-Fi offload can save customers money by shifting traffic from the mobile data plan to the fixed network data plan, which most often is functionally “unlimited,” so offloading traffic from the 4G network to the 5G network frees up capacity for 4G users. 

“We are very, very close to crossing 50 percent of our total traffic being 5G,” said Peter Osvaldik, T-Mobile CFO. And so if you went back a year ago, the number would probably been close to 10 percent.”. 

That should come as no surprise. The former Sprint network had more than 50 percent of its 4G traffic carried by the 2.5-GHz spectrum in 2018, for example. 

source: Tutela 

That is a huge shift of demand from 4G to 5G, as well as significantly avoided demand on the 4G network. 

Functionally, moving customers off the 4G network is the same as investing in additional 4G capacity. As more former 4G users switch to 5G, their experience should improve, to the extent that additional bandwidth makes a difference. 

According to Neville Ray, T-Mobile CTO, more than 40 percent of T-Mobile postpaid smartphone accounts are on the 5G network. 

And though skeptics remain, T-Mobile’s home broadband effort using fixed wireless is showing progress that would surprise some critics. 

“In three quarters since launching the product (fixed wireless) commercially, we were the number one in net adds in the broadband space in Q4, and 2022 will look bigger than 2021 did from that regard,” Osvaldik said. 

In substantial part, the strategy is fueled by bandwidth surplus: T-Mobile simply has more bandwidth than it really needs to support the mobility part of the business. 

T-Mobile says the cost of a radio site using 2.5-GHz spectrum is the same in urban and rural areas. And the 200 MHz of 2.5-GHz spectrum means T-Mobile has more capacity than it requires to support 5G. 

The fixed wireless business is built on those excess resources.