T-Mobile Fiber, an operating unit of T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS), has its sights on growing its fiber business. The company first started reselling residential fiber under the T-Mobile brand in New York City in 2021. Its main goal with T-Mobile Fiber is to bring fiber-to-the-home service in select markets where broadband connectivity is either lacking or is inadequate from incumbent service providers. T-Mobile Fiber is being offered on a standalone basis and not offered with T-Mobile wireless.
Note that the company is not building its own fiber infrastructure. Rather, it works with local fiber providers on a wholesale basis. Its partners handle the construction of the fiber networks while T-Mobile Fiber serves as the internet service provider to customers. T-Mobile Fiber is currently available in New York City, Kenosha, WI, and Pueblo and Northglenn, CO, and is rapidly expanding to other cities in markets in the Midwest, California and Florida. So far, the company has not provided any numbers on households passed or current fiber subscriber counts.
“In the space of fiber, where you might have specialized infra companies, we’re not the experts in digging ditches and getting fiber to the home,” said Peter Osvaldik, T-Mobile CFO, at a recent investor conference. “But we do have a set of tremendous brand assets, customer relationships, distributions that can allow us — faster penetration, deeper penetration or different unit economics because your customer acquisition costs can be different than a pure fiber player. So those are the kind of things that really drive … incremental value to the core wireless business versus some defensive play.”
T-Mobile Fiber is offering monthly symmetrical broadband service plans that range from 500 Mbps for $55 per month up to 2 Gbps for $110 per month in select locations.
T-Mobile Fiber and Tillman FiberCo, LLC, recently announced a wholesale agreement that gives T-Mobile Fiber access to Tillman Fiber’s network being built in Florida that will serve the Tampa Bay area, the Florida Panhandle, and South and Southwest regions of the state.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
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