Fixed wireless might be a niche, but it is an important niche for Verizon and T-Mobile home broadband businesses. In its first quarter of 2022, for example, fixed wireless supplied 85 percent of Verizon net home broadband account additions.
For its part, T-Mobile got fully a third of total net home broadband additions in the U.S. market in 2021, and all of those accounts gained used fixed wireless.
Observers will continue to debate how important fixed wireless might ultimately prove to be, as a means for telcos to take market share.
In the first quarter of 2022, “we had 194,000 fixed wireless access net adds across the portfolio, which is 2.5 times our 4Q '21 performance,” says Matt Ellis, Verizon CFO. For context, consider that Verizon added 229,000 total net internet access accounts.
So fixed wireless accounted for 85 percent of Verizon’s home broadband account growth in the first quarter of 2022. Fios fiber-to-the-home connections grew by 60,000 net accounts, by way of comparison.
Globally, most fixed wireless connections will continue to rely on 4G. 5G is likely to be more important in the U.S. market, especially as a platform allowing mobile operators and telcos to take market share from cable operators.
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