It was only last November that soon-to-retire T-Mobile tech chief Neville Ray described fixed wireless access as an almost a perfect business, relying on "fallow capacity" and provided to customers at "de minimis" incremental costs.
Of course, nothing so perfect can last.
A new report compiled by The Brattle Group on behalf of the wireless industry's big trade group, the Cellular Telephone Industries Association (CTIA), suggest U.S. wireless operators will run out of 5G capacity by 2027. (Hat tip to Light Reading, which first picked up the report.)
"Absent any new spectrum, in five years, by 2027, the U.S. is expected to have a spectrum deficit of nearly 400 megahertz," the Brattle report says.
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“Fixed wireless access would likely be the first service to be impacted — already today home broadband over 5G is only offered in locations where operators have available capacity in the network to provide sufficient quality of service for a home connection,” the report adds.
Earlier this month, equity research company MoffettNathanson published its own report, which illustrated how T-Mobile's FWA service has largely been confined to parts of markets that have extra network capacity.
Notably, T-Mobile added 524,000 FWA customers in the fourth quarter, but growth actually slowed for the first time on a sequential basis, dropping from 574,000 subscriber additions in Q3.
This begged the question for some: Is T-Mobile already approaching saturation in the rural-skewing areas in which it has extra 5G capacity?
Of course, top cable operators, which have been undermined by $50-a-month pricing for T-Mobile and Verizon FWA services, are having their “toldja!’ moment, having pointed to FWA capacity issues all along.
