While naysayers moan that 5G hasn’t lived up to the hype, fixed wireless access (FWA) has been absorbing all broadband subscriber growth in the market since mid-2022, according to OpenSignal, with cable companies seeing a precipitous decline in net adds since the second quarter 2020.
FWA is not just popular in rural areas, which feel the digital divide, but in urban, as well. “In the U.S., FWA has become a highly competitive mainstream option in well-saturated urban markets,” the firm said. “FWA is nearly as popular in urban areas as in rural ones, as FWA providers have so far claimed around 6 percent of the market in urban areas and 7 percent in rural ones.”
As a result, carriers are successfully using FWA to monetize their 5G networks, expanding their broadband footprints for minimal incremental network investment.
“FWA is the secret sauce for 5G monetization. It has emerged as a transformative use case driving the widespread deployment of 5G technology,” OpenSignal said. “It benefits from lower prices compared to wireline competition, access to existing mobile retail channels and subscribers, and the ability to deliver a ‘good enough’ broadband service.”
One fear about FWA was that it might cause degradation of the mobile networks’ performance. But U.S. mobile networks have held up despite adding millions of 5G FWA subs since 2021.
“5G speeds on T-Mobile and Verizon’s mobile networks have continued to improve,” OpenSignal said. “Their success in managing FWA traffic is due to a variety of factors, including plentiful access to mid-band spectrum, localized load management, and differences in peak usage time of day patterns between mobile and fixed broadband usage.”
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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