T-Mobile on Thursday announced that it added 541,000 fixed wireless access users in the fourth quarter, an increase of about 2.1 million for the full year, making 2023 the biggest year of growth in FWA history.
T-Mobile currently has approximately 4.78 million 5G home internet customers since launching in April 2021. (The company’s fourth quarter financial results announcement is available here. )
T-Mobile and Verizon currently manage nearly 8 million FWA customers combined, but that number is rapidly increasing as FWA pricing becomes less competitive.
Also read: Verizon surpasses 3 million fixed wireless customers with 375,000 additions in Q4
But T-Mobile quietly gave up some of that price advantage last week, raising the bill to $60 per month for new FWA customers who don’t already use its smartphone service (and those using AutoPay). ($65 for non-customers)).
Pricing for new T-Mobile wireless customers ranges from $40 to $50 per month, depending on the plan (CNET A detailed breakdown of the company’s 5G home internet pricing here. )
T-Mobile is raising prices for home broadband as its cable competitors also look for ways to make the convergence of wireless and wireline work. For example, Charter Communications offers Spectrum Mobile users his 300 Mbps service for $50 per month.
Meanwhile, there are indicators that support the cable industry’s long-held belief that FWA will eventually run into capacity issues.
For example, on Tuesday mobile report The company noted that T-Mobile (also quietly) inserted new terms and conditions that require power users who consume more than 1.2 terabytes of data per month to apply throttles during moments of network congestion. I noticed.
Notably, T-Mobile says this is not technically a “throttle.” This is because the user’s speed will return to normal once the peak usage period has passed.
Also worth noting is that T-Mobile’s FWA customers are second only to mobile customers in terms of network resources. And with the fixed wireless user base rapidly increasing, this seems to us a sign that his FWA resources are starting to be spread thin.
