U.S. Cellular laud 5G fixed wireless services

As indicated by probably the greatest organizations in the 5G business, fixed wireless Internet administrations are growing up – incredibly.

"We've already brought T-Mobile Home Internet access to millions of customers who have been underserved by the competition. But we're just getting started. As we've seen in our first few months together with Sprint, our combined network will continue to unlock benefits for our customers, laying the groundwork to bring 5G to Home Internet soon," said Dow Draper, a former Sprint executive who is now T-Mobile's EVP of emerging products, in a press release.

T-Mobile as of late dispatched a 4G-based fixed remote access (FWA) administration across 20 million US families; on Monday the organization extended that to an extra 130 urban communities and towns across nine states. (Organization authorities said the extension covers "millions" additional family units yet didn't give points of interest.)

Yet, one year from now, T-Mobile said it would dispatch the 5G adaptation of the administration, and by 2027 it said it would cover half of all US families with the fixed remote contribution.

The opportunities could be significant.

"Our cable provider constantly struggled to keep Zoom video working (so much so that I accessed audio through my mobile phone not my computer)," wrote consultant Jim Patterson of Patterson Advisory Group in his weekly newsletter. He said he switched to T-Mobile's new 4G fixed wireless service and is now supporting streaming on TVs, smartphones and laptops with 50-70Mbit/s speeds.

And he noted T-Mobile could soon sweeten the service with its new streaming TV package, offering combined mobile, TV and fixed Internet services at a discounted price.

"Could Magenta [which is T-Mobile's corporate color] be using the same bundle tool against cable that Time Warner, Cox and Cablevision effectively used against the telcos 15 years ago?" he wrote. "Who will get there first – cable with attractive family plan pricing, or T-Mobile with 2.5GHz integrated into 200-300 million POPs [points of presence, a measurement of population]? That may be one of the most important questions for 2021."

Verizon's 5G FWA gets mixed reception

Verizon, as far as concerns its, is likewise seeking after the FWA business through 4G and 5G. The organization dispatched its 5G offering in its millimeter wave (mmWave) range in 2018, yet lately it has started growing its inclusion region on account of the expansion of new chipsets that help all the more impressive client premises hardware (CPE). The organization's CEO as of late depicted 5G Home as a "transformative business."

Notwithstanding, trial of the recently refreshed help seem blended. For instance, PCMag detailed that Verizon is just contribution 5G Home to few clients in Chicago and Minneapolis in scope of its transmitters, a circumstance that doesn't seem to mirror the more extensive inclusion regions probably upheld by Qualcomm's new chipsets for the administrator's CPE.

In any case, Mike Thelander of Signals Research Group said he as of late tried the administration in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul zone of Minnesota and found that Verizon had the option to convey somewhere in the range of 1 and 2 Gbit/s utilizing around 400MHz of mmWave range across separations of around 1 km, remembering for both view and non-view arrangements.

Off the beaten path

Indeed, the broader coverage area supported by more powerful fixed 5G services could also have implications for rural markets. For example, U.S. Cellular CEO Laurent Therivel pointed out that the operator recently achieved 100Mbit/s speeds over a mmWave connection at distances up to 5 km with partners Ericsson and Qualcomm.

"That speaks pretty highly for the kinds of services that we're going to be able to provide to rural North America," he said during his company's quarterly conference call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. He said the operator would begin wider testing of the service in the first quarter of next year, though he did not commit to a broad commercial rollout of the technology.

U.S. Cellular isn't alone in looking at 5G in rural areas for fixed Internet services. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported on WiConnect Wireless, a fixed wireless Internet provider in southwestern Wisconsin that counts nine employees serving 5G fixed wireless Internet connections to 1,400 rural households in seven counties.

WiConnect's David Bangert told the publication that the company's transmission sites often sit atop grain silos and cost around $20,000 apiece, connecting around 25 homes each. He said the company can provide speeds of around 25 Mbit/s for $79 to $99 a month.

Will such investments into 5G fixed wireless technologies affect existing, wired Internet service providers? Some don't think so.

"The speeds that they're talking about is not something that's worrying us, but we would never count them out," Cable One CEO Julia Laulis said of T-Mobile's fixed wireless offerings, when questioned on the topic during her company's quarterly conference call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. "We like to think that we have a competitive mindset in that our reliable products and our above-average service will serve us well."

However, it's worth noting that Cable One recently acquired stakes in two rural fixed wireless Internet providers: 40% in Wisper and less than 10% in NextLink.