Fixed Wireless and New Spectrum Bands Will Drive Growth: SBA CEO
Fixed-wireless access is driving 5G use cases, with 15 million subscribers today and “aspirations of over 20 million by 2028,” SBA Communications CEO Brendan Cavanagh told investors Monday as the company released Q3 results (see 2511030038).
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“Paired with increasing mobile data traffic, that's a heavy burden on today's networks,” Cavanagh said. “This will require ongoing network investment via overlays and densifications, including cell splitting, refarming of existing spectrum bands and newly acquired spectrum to meet those network needs.” The FCC must auction the upper C band by July 2027, which will mean more work for SBA, Cavanagh noted.
“While there is still work to be done to identify which additional bands will ultimately be auctioned, upper midband frequencies such as 4.4 to 4.9 GHz and 7.25 to 7.4 GHz are currently being studied,” he said. “These higher bands will not propagate as far and will require denser networks and new equipment at our cell towers.” In addition, Cavanagh hailed the importance of SBA's new master agreement with Verizon, also announced Monday, for providing "operational efficiencies" and "certainty for the future.”