Wireless Internet

Since 2020, AT&T's network has seen an annual 30% increase in traffic. This is the direct result of our progress enabling standalone 5G. Many of the newest mobile devices use the 5G standalone network that we are moving thousands of customers to every day.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is a huge factor in the prepaid ecosystem. In the coming years, the two top sources of funding for this ecosystem will be the Total by Verizon store rollout and the ACP.

Midco is a midwestern service provider that offers broadband via hybrid fiber coax (HFC), fiber-to-the-home, and fixed wireless access (FWA). The company serves 490,000 homes and businesses in 400 communities in Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Midco is doing greenfield fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) builds in new communities and to large multi-dwelling units. But in brownfields, it’s doing a mix, adding fiber deeper into neighborhoods, but also upgrading its cable plant.

The National Content & Technology Cooperative (NCTC), formerly known as the National Cable Television Cooperative, has completed the build of its Connectivity Exchange platform, which allows NCTC broadband provider members to compete for and win bids to provide services to commercial customers through a single unified network. Initially focused on negotiating video-related deals for smaller broadband and pay TV provider members, the NCTC's focus has expanded to include offerings such as a mobile virtual network operator offering through AT&T.

Despite the cable mobile virtual network operators' (MVNO's) success with bundled offerings and heavily discounted wireless service plans, don’t expect Verizon to follow suit. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg dismissed the cable MVNO's strategy of offering free or discounted wireless service plans when bundled with broadband. “Lowballing and discounting won’t help us,” he said, adding that the company recently ended its $25/month discounted pricing for its 5G Home fixed wireless access offering.

Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey believes fixed wireless access (FWA) won't meet speed and bandwidth demands. In fact, Winfrey likens it to DSL – a product that had its moment but saw many customers flee to cable's higher-quality connections. The initial success of FWA "shows there's a nice, niche market for limited-bandwidth, limited-capacity, and limited-reliability product," Winfrey said.

T-Mobile won thousands of 2.5GHz spectrum licenses around the US in a Federal Communications Commission auction that ended in 2022. But the FCC would face "criminal penalties" if it gave T-Mobile its 2.5GHz license winnings. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel explained that the FCC's "auction authority" expired in March and so far has not been renewed by Congress, which means the agency no longer has the regulatory authority to issue spectrum licenses.

Mobile operators are spending less on their 5G buildouts, but that doesn’t mean that the 5G deployment phase is over. Executives at the big-three tower companies —American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications — said that the tower leasing business is still thriving because mobile operators are still expanding their 5G networks, particularly in their mid-band spectrum, where much of the 5G traffic will be carried. Along with that mid-band expansion, operators are starting to densify their networks with small cells, particularly

Comcast is getting ready to activate Philadelphia (PA) as a trial market for cellular offload (i.e. using complementary network technologies for delivering data originally targeted for cellular networks).

Key findings on mobile coverage and fixed broadband availability across the UK as of April and May 2023: