T-Mobile executives declared the company will be the first nationwide 5G provider in the country. Speaking at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York City on Wednesday, COO Mike Sievert said, “The radios being deployed now will be software upgradeable.”
For years, T-Mobile only had mid-band spectrum and its network architecture was based on that. It’s been focused on densification using small cells with companies like Crown “coming in with full turnkey solutions targeted towards the most difficult areas” of the country to deploy, said Sievert. “We’re future-proofing…to get ahead of 5G.” T-Mobile is beginning to roll out its 600 MHz spectrum now, Inside Towers reported.
Sievert said network speed is a function of capacity. “We hit 30 megabits-per-second last month nationwide.” It’s VoLTE technology allows T-Mobile to refarm spectrum previously dedicated to legacy technology “and widen that to 4G and ultimately 5G. If you look at scale, one of our competitors said 50 percent of their spectrum is dedicated to legacy technology; it’s hard to overcome that,” said Sievert.
Turning to the future, as more communications companies try to jockey for market position traditionally staked out by wireless carriers, T-Mobile is watching the cable space. At the end of last quarter, it looked like Comcast had about 200,000 activations, said Sievert, though he’s not sure how many of those were company employees. While there’s opportunity for convergence, “I think they’ll struggle to get consumer interest. It’s not about being a wireless company anymore. It’s about providing communications on the internet. We’re interested in cable but it doesn’t look like that segment will change the competitive dynamic in 2018.”
The company is more interested in collaborating with regional wireless carriers than conducting a full merger. “We’re open to that,” said EVP/CFO J. Braxton Carter.
Sievert said: “We believe all kinds of companies are landing on the internet and the internet is going mobile. There’s opportunities for us to play in this rapidly emerging marketplace.
December 7, 2017
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