Fixed Wireless Access Has 'Arrived,' T-Mobile's Ray Says

FWA customers. “Many folks are looking at us, and to a slightly lesser extent Verizon” on “how we've driven 5G network capability into new business,” Ray said. Operators globally are “trying to figure out what's that fixed wireless access formula,” he said. T-Mobile is exploring ways to use its millimeter-wave spectrum as part of its home broadband offering, but that will require the development of customer premise equipment and antennas installed outside the home, Ray said. “There's more complexity in the solution -- there's a truck roll and so on,” he said: “But we're getting very confident now we can make those economics work.” Ray noted T-Mobile added 10,000 cellsites to its network from Sprint, but overall has decommissioned 30,000 since the Sprint deal three years ago. T-Mobile doesn’t decommission a cellsite without a lot of thought, he said. “We were looking forward multiple years into what we think we need” and “we believe we have that footprint,” he said. Ray is leaving the carrier in the fall (see 2302130068), to be replaced by Chief Network Officer Ulf Ewaldsson. “We built this network site by site … MHz by MHz, generation at a time, 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G,” he said. The years since the Sprint buy have been “the most rewarding period in my career” and T-Mobile is no longer the “scrappy underdog,” Ray said.