T-Mobile's Neville Ray Says Booming Fixed Wireless Biz Is Built on Extra Network Capacity

T-Mobile has the fastest-growing home internet solution in America right now, with its 5G fixed wireless service taking on 578,000 customers in the third quarter alone and quickly amassing a base of over 2.1 million users in just over a year. According to T-Mobile CEO Neville Ray, the entire enterprise is based on "fallow capacity"—network wherewithal that's not already being tapped by the wireless company's mobile users. “The incremental cost of serving those customers is de minimis," said Ray. "And why would you sit on your hands on all of that capacity that you have no utilization for or line of sight to use? So, we've created a huge business in the space, which is just—it's gone way better than we'd anticipated.” T-Mobile is looking to have as many as 8 million fixed wireless access (FWA) customers by 2025. Ray said that T-Mobile makes "protecting our mobile" a priority vs. having to compete for network resources with FWA. But at that larger scale, that could become challenging. With that in mind, Ray seemed to confirm recent speculation in wireless technology pubs that T-Mobile is looking to possibly exploit its prior investment into millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum to create an "overlay" network in order to serve two masters at once. At that point, T-Mobile would find itself making an actual capacity investment into its FWA business. But if it were to keep right on growing the way it has been, the opportunity might be worthwhile.