AT&T has over 500,000 fixed wireless subscribers, but it’s focused on fiber

Both T-Mobile and Verizon have made quite a big deal about their new fixed wireless access (FWA) offerings. They’re tapping unused capacity on their nationwide wireless networks to offer FWA for home broadband. These offerings will help to provide broadband in underserved areas, and they also give T-Mobile and Verizon a means to steal share from wired telco and cable providers. At the end of December 2021, T-Mobile had 646,000 home internet customers, and Verizon had about 223,000 subs. But AT&T has been relatively quiet on the topic of FWA for the past couple of years. Therefore, it was surprising when Wave7 Research's new FWA report showed that AT&T is among the top 12 fixed wireless providers in the US. The Wave7 report was based on numbers from BroadbandNow, which indicate that AT&T’s FWA offering covers 5.7 million people. AT&T offers an FWA point-to-point service, similar to that provided by wireless internet service providers (WISPs) where a device is installed on the outside of the customer’s home, which receives a signal from a nearby FWA transmitter. And AT&T also offers an FWA point-to-multipoint service with a device in the home that receives the mobile signal from its macro network. He said AT&T is planning an FWA announcement for later in 2022, but he wouldn’t provide any specifics now, other than to say it would offer more choice.