Monica Alleven

It’s a question that has baffled many minds for years. The mismatch between the U.S. population growth rate and U.S. wireless carriers’ ability to add oodles of new phone customers every quarter has mystified some Wall Street analysts for eons. “Investors have been puzzling over the industry’s ‘excess growth’ for years now,” wrote Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research. “Wireless is, after all, a fully saturated industry in the U.S.

It’s been a long time coming, but T-Mobile has found a buyer for the 800 MHz spectrum it inherited from Sprint.

Verizon and T-Mobile are at it again, and this time, it’s more about what’s above their terrestrial networks than what’s on the ground. To be sure, these two have been at each other’s throats for years, primarily because Verizon made a reputation for itself as the carrier with the “best network” and T-Mobile, long known as a network laggard, set its sights on upending that.

With Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks announcing his plans to leave the agency this spring, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is that much closer to having a Republican majority on board. How much he needs that majority is another question.

If everything goes their way, U.S. wireless carriers could see somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 MHz of spectrum flowing into the spectrum pipeline over the next four years. Based on previous transactions, that spectrum could be worth a cool $160 billion.

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following T-Mobile’s 5G expansion into small towns and rural areas of the U.S., but Ookla made it official this week, crowning T-Mobile the leader for its 5G coverage in rural areas.

The wireless industry, namely CTIA, recently cheered Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr’s move to launch a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) into the upper C-band—meaning more licensed spectrum being pumped into the pipeline for wireless carriers. But analysts say it’s too early to celebrate. That’s because Elon Musk’s SpaceX is eyeing the same spectrum for shared satellite use and it’s not at all clear where this will eventually land.

What’s the likelihood of the wireless industry getting a piece of the lower 3 GHz band, currently occupied by the Department of Defense (DoD)? The prospects look a lot better since President Donald Trump took residence at the White House, as well as Sen Ted Cruz seizing (R-TX) control as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Wireless industry evangelists are downright giddy over the prospects of lower 3 GHz spectrum being made available for wireless operators.

Investment analysts expect President Donald Trump’s changes in U.S. immigration policy will have a profound effect on wireless carriers’ subscriber counts in 2025 and beyond, but the carriers themselves are reluctant to own up to any near-term impact. That’s in part because it’s a sensitive political subject—and it’s too early to tell. But there’s no denying that a crackdown in U.S. immigration will lead to a lower U.S. population, resulting in a smaller pool of customers for the wireless industry that already serves nearly everybody old enough to hold a cell phone.

Is open RAN dead? Santiago “Yago” Tenorio, the open RAN trailblazer who left Vodafone for Verizon, hears that question a lot. The short answer: No. The longer one but perhaps not what everyone wants to hear: Maybe the industry needs to re-examine what it really means by “open RAN.” Spun out of a desire by operators to break the vendor “lock-in” that vendors like Ericsson and Nokia commandeered, open RAN—short for “Radio Access Network”—was launched as a way to enable operators to mix and match products from different vendors.