T-Mobile:
Sprint Merger Will Unleash New Cable Broadband
Competitor Featuring Fixed Wireless
By Joan Engebretson, Telecompetitor, September 13, 2018
If
T-Mobile
and Sprint are allowed to merge, they will launch a fixed wireless offering to 52% of U.S. zip codes, said
T-Mobile
President Mike Sievert yesterday. The
T-Mobile
fixed wireless offering would specifically target cable companies, Sievert said.
A really interesting upside for the new
T-Mobile
is to attack the least competitive and most hated industry in
this sector, which is home broadband cable companies, said Sievert.
The new
T-Mobile
is the
phrase that
T-Mobile
uses for a merged
T-Mobile
and Sprint.
Pointing to
Comcast in particular, Sievert said the new
T-Mobile
would offer fixed wireless in two thirds of that companys territory and well have more homes passed than they do in home broadband with
the new
T-Mobile.
T-Mobile
also has video in its arsenal now too, with their acquisition of Layer 3. A bundled fixed wireless and video offer could be interesting.
T-Mobile
Fixed Wireless
In an FCC filing at the time it announced plans to merge with Sprint,
T-Mobile
said it would launch fixed wireless if
the merger were approved, but that filing only references a target market of 52.2 million rural residents over 2.4 million square miles or approximately 84.2% of rural residents.
That filing also references a target speed of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream.
If the new
T-Mobile
fixed wireless service were to provide speeds near that minimum, the offering wouldnt be the
cable company attack product that Sievert describes.
Potentially
T-Mobile
intended speeds considerably higher
than 25/3 all along but referenced those speeds in the FCC filing because they represent a target often referenced by the FCC, and the company may have wanted to reveal as little as possible for competitive reasons. Its also possible that in
the months since the filing, the company has noted a technology cost/performance breakthrough that would enable the
T-Mobile
fixed wireless offering to support higher speeds and a larger target market.
Sprint Spectrum is Key
Sievert stopped short of
specifying speeds for the
T-Mobile
fixed wireless offering, but his comments about the mobile offering he envisions for the merged company offer some clues. According to Sievert, the merged companys 5G
offering would support average speeds nationwide of 450 megabits per second and 100 megabits per second to 90% of Americans.