(T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert)T-Mobile will break into the home broadband market in a big way later this month, CEO Mike Sievert said during a company webcast on Wednesday.
"Later this month we will share our launch plans for the immediate, much broader availability of our consumer home broadband service," Sievert said.
The company has been running a year-long home broadband pilot, which attracted more than 100,000 customers; many more were turned away, Sievert said.
While the home broadband pilot only promises 4G speeds and technology, T-Mobile has been sending out 5G routers to new subscribers and "some customers may receive" 5G speeds, he said.
The home internet option will come to "rural, small town and suburban" areas first, said Dow Draper, T-Mobile EVP of emerging products.
Capacity isn't a problem; 20% of the customers on the home internet pilot have been using more than 500GB a month, even on 4G, he said.
There's a lot of opportunity in home internet, Draper says. Unspoken in this expansion is how T-Mobile will continue to make sure capacity isn't a problem, by restricting signups.
By the end of the year, Draper said, they hope to have around 500,000 customers, with 7-8 million by 2025.
The company will launch home internet in places where it forecasts the capacity is available, Sievert said, and will dip into its library of unused, higher-band millimeter-wave if it feels pinched.
"With the right business model, if we need to, we'll go in and opportunistically light up millimeter-wave spectrum just to support this," he said.
Elon Musk's Starlink and Verizon's upcoming 5G Home plans don't bother T-Mobile much, Sievert said.
"We're just getting ahead way faster than the competition.
By the time the other guys get there, we may have soaked up a lot of the opportunity," he said.
Starlink's beta test was most recently reported to have "over 10,000" subscribers, while T-Mobile's pilot has 100,000.
A Nationwide Network
The company also said it's driving into deep suburban and rural markets where it hasn't played much before, and where it sees a lot of opportunity.
T-Mobile just entered Vermont, the Dakotas, and Montana, said Jon Freier, T-Mobile EVP of consumer markets.
In some smaller markets, T-Mobile has a single-digit percentage of consumers, as opposed to the 30% or more it may have in large cities.
"We estimate our rural market share is in the low teens," Freier said.
"We need to disrupt the competition in true UnCarrier fashion by bringing real choice."
The carrier will start to sell products in 1,000 Walmart stores in rural America, as well as opening new T-Mobile stores that unify both T-Mobile postpaid and Metro by T-Mobile prepaid products, he said.
T-Mobile president of technology Neville Ray talks about nationwide coverage. T-Mobile CMO Matt Staneff acknowledged that the company still has a ways to go with network perception.
"Our customers love and boast about their amazing UnCarrier benefits, but they actively recommend T-Mobile's network less than 20% of the time," he said.
T-Mobile's mid-band, "ultra capacity" 5G now reaches 125 million people, and it will be "substantially complete" by the end of 2023, said Neville Ray, T-Mobile president of technology.
Just as importantly, the network has a lot of headroom to add capacity.
On average, it's using 60MHz of its 160MHz of mid-band 5G airwaves nationwide, Ray said.
T-Mobile will ramp it up to 80-100MHz this year, and then break the 100MHz barrier as they "complete their network integration" in 2022.
Sailing the C-Band
Unlike Verizon, T-Mobile played down the impact of this month's C-band auction, where it spent $9.3 billion for 40MHz of spectrum in many urban and suburban markets.
That spectrum won't be available to use until 2023, and Sievert positioned it as a capacity booster to help head off any potential congestion in T-Mobile's densest cities.
"We invested smartly in C-band to add to our ultra-capacity 5G in urban and suburban areas, where our site density is high," Ray said.
Even with Verizon's C-band buy, T-Mobile says it has more mid-band 5G spectrum. There's a little war going on between T-Mobile and Verizon in terms of how useful various airwaves are.
T-Mobile wants to play up its existing 2.5GHz airwaves, which it calls "ultra capacity" and will be the backbone for its big nationwide 5G moves, including home broadband.
Verizon just spent $43 billion on C-band.
So T-Mobile says that C-band doesn't have the range for broad coverage, and Verizon says T-Mobile just aren't very good network builders.
C-band "is not going to provide meaningful nationwide capacity or coverage for either" Verizon or AT&T, Ray sniffed.
He argued that "there is no practical path...with C-band alone aside from massively expensive network densification," adding many new cell sites.
As a result of the cost of Verizon and AT&T's buildouts, "T-Mobile's cost per gig will be half that of Verizon and AT&T in five years," Ray predicted.
(T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert)T-Mobile will break into the home broadband market in a big way later this month, CEO Mike Sievert said during a company webcast on Wednesday.
"Later this month we will share our launch plans for the immediate, much broader availability of our consumer home broadband service," Sievert said.
The company has been running a year-long home broadband pilot, which attracted more than 100,000 customers; many more were turned away, Sievert said.
While the home broadband pilot only promises 4G speeds and technology, T-Mobile has been sending out 5G routers to new subscribers and "some customers may receive" 5G speeds, he said.
The home internet option will come to "rural, small town and suburban" areas first, said Dow Draper, T-Mobile EVP of emerging products.
Capacity isn't a problem; 20% of the customers on the home internet pilot have been using more than 500GB a month, even on 4G, he said.
There's a lot of opportunity in home internet, Draper says. Unspoken in this expansion is how T-Mobile will continue to make sure capacity isn't a problem, by restricting signups.
By the end of the year, Draper said, they hope to have around 500,000 customers, with 7-8 million by 2025.
The company will launch home internet in places where it forecasts the capacity is available, Sievert said, and will dip into its library of unused, higher-band millimeter-wave if it feels pinched.
"With the right business model, if we need to, we'll go in and opportunistically light up millimeter-wave spectrum just to support this," he said.
Elon Musk's Starlink and Verizon's upcoming 5G Home plans don't bother T-Mobile much, Sievert said.
"We're just getting ahead way faster than the competition.
By the time the other guys get there, we may have soaked up a lot of the opportunity," he said.
Starlink's beta test was most recently reported to have "over 10,000" subscribers, while T-Mobile's pilot has 100,000.
A Nationwide Network
The company also said it's driving into deep suburban and rural markets where it hasn't played much before, and where it sees a lot of opportunity.
T-Mobile just entered Vermont, the Dakotas, and Montana, said Jon Freier, T-Mobile EVP of consumer markets.
In some smaller markets, T-Mobile has a single-digit percentage of consumers, as opposed to the 30% or more it may have in large cities.
"We estimate our rural market share is in the low teens," Freier said.
"We need to disrupt the competition in true UnCarrier fashion by bringing real choice."
The carrier will start to sell products in 1,000 Walmart stores in rural America, as well as opening new T-Mobile stores that unify both T-Mobile postpaid and Metro by T-Mobile prepaid products, he said.
T-Mobile president of technology Neville Ray talks about nationwide coverage. T-Mobile CMO Matt Staneff acknowledged that the company still has a ways to go with network perception.
"Our customers love and boast about their amazing UnCarrier benefits, but they actively recommend T-Mobile's network less than 20% of the time," he said.
T-Mobile's mid-band, "ultra capacity" 5G now reaches 125 million people, and it will be "substantially complete" by the end of 2023, said Neville Ray, T-Mobile president of technology.
Just as importantly, the network has a lot of headroom to add capacity.
On average, it's using 60MHz of its 160MHz of mid-band 5G airwaves nationwide, Ray said.
T-Mobile will ramp it up to 80-100MHz this year, and then break the 100MHz barrier as they "complete their network integration" in 2022.
Sailing the C-Band
Unlike Verizon, T-Mobile played down the impact of this month's C-band auction, where it spent $9.3 billion for 40MHz of spectrum in many urban and suburban markets.
That spectrum won't be available to use until 2023, and Sievert positioned it as a capacity booster to help head off any potential congestion in T-Mobile's densest cities.
"We invested smartly in C-band to add to our ultra-capacity 5G in urban and suburban areas, where our site density is high," Ray said.
Even with Verizon's C-band buy, T-Mobile says it has more mid-band 5G spectrum. There's a little war going on between T-Mobile and Verizon in terms of how useful various airwaves are.
T-Mobile wants to play up its existing 2.5GHz airwaves, which it calls "ultra capacity" and will be the backbone for its big nationwide 5G moves, including home broadband.
Verizon just spent $43 billion on C-band.
So T-Mobile says that C-band doesn't have the range for broad coverage, and Verizon says T-Mobile just aren't very good network builders.
C-band "is not going to provide meaningful nationwide capacity or coverage for either" Verizon or AT&T, Ray sniffed.
He argued that "there is no practical path...with C-band alone aside from massively expensive network densification," adding many new cell sites.
As a result of the cost of Verizon and AT&T's buildouts, "T-Mobile's cost per gig will be half that of Verizon and AT&T in five years," Ray predicted.
