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The race to 5G is over, now it's time to pay the bills

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sfx2000

sfx2000

Part of the Furniture
The 5G deployments here in the US have been expensive, so much that we lost one of our major wireless operators (Sprint, eaten up by T-Mobile US), and the carriers are now stuck with very expensive spectrum commitments that are not paying off...

www.theverge.com

The race to 5G is over — now it’s time to pay the bill

The flashiest use cases are still a fantasy.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
 
I think it comes down to two approaches.

TMO focused on distance and speed while the other two spent big on short distances and blistering speed.

The other two jumped head first without a foundation before refocusing on mmwave for higher speed.

TMO tends to be about twice as fast using repurposed spectrum it had and acquired through buying sprint assets.

The other two were so focused on mmwave they didn't improve their existing spectrum offerings and speeds show. Vzw used to be the go-to for bandwidth but fell to second place and att well....

It's all hindsight now and they're scrambling to get at least as fast to claw back some customers. While they do this though TMO is now putting some effort into mmwave ramp up. From what I've gleaned so far there's a couple of markets live and more to come once they iron things out to an assembly line deployment to other markets. Once they have the drop in solution for sites it will happen quickly like other network upgrades from the past.
 
Tech Junky said:
I think it comes down to two approaches.

TMO focused on distance and speed while the other two spent big on short distances and blistering speed.

The other two jumped head first without a foundation before refocusing on mmwave for higher speed.

TMO tends to be about twice as fast using repurposed spectrum it had and acquired through buying sprint assets.
Click to expand...

It's a bit more complex than that...

We're in a very mature market - so subscriber growth is slow - mostly due to churn from one carrier to another...

VZ, ATT, TMO are all in a fairly static space - they compete these days on cost... and they've been sucking the big air out of the room - TMO for example with Mint, and VZW with their Trakphone/Net10 buy - those are now subs that are not in play...

DISH isn't viable, IMHO as of Dec 2023, as the opportunity to grow is pretty limited, and the build-out of their 5G is capital intensive... and there, they're competing against Big Cable with their MVNO brands, mostly running on VZW spectrum...

I don't see MMwave as really a major growth topic - yes, it does big bandwidth, but at a very limited range and direct line of sight... Sub-6 is where all the growth is, but again, in a flat/mature market...
 
True the # of subs don't change much but, the # of devices can.

IOT and inter device communication can be an area for growth in terms of the # of lines being used.

DISH is / has always been a joke.

MVNO subs still count even though they're wholesale. If the MNOs offered plans that were stripped down at a reasonable price then there would be less need for MVNO wholesale. My reason for going MVNO is it's a better deal than going with the MNO directly on a monthly cost perspective. However, with my little 5G FWA conversion I'm looking into swapping to a MNO plan using some bundled lines options and switching from 2 subscriptions aka $60/mo to $40-$45/mo and just pop the sim from one device to the other when needed. My modem should be hitting customs clearance in the next day or so and then delivery probably mon/tues depending on how quick DHL hands it over to USPS.

Since TMO uses IPv6 I've been staging my interfaces / vpn / firewall for a more streamlined approach with the modem not having NAT v4 to the LAN. I've resisted the move to v6 but, I can still just NAT the LAN with v4 for easy management. None of this has much to do wit the OP though just some insight into what I'm doing at the moment.

As to the whole more devices though... even my 2014 car had a 3G modem inside the dash. Automakers are a bit slow when it comes to supply chain upgrades to newer tech like 5G but, it's in the works probably. I haven't been looking at vehicles though to see the progression nut, LTE coming online in the supply chain didn't take too long IIRC 2018? it started showing up a bit more. Then you have watches and other gadgets with modems built in. Looking into the plans available for data only though revealed quite a variety of plans from $10 gadget plans to full blown PC / router plans with unlimited data i.e. 1TB monthly from $35-$150+ depending on your source. So, there's definitely still room to grow the bottom line if they can get the modems into mroe devices to sell plans to go along with them.
 
sfx2000 said:
That's part of the acquisition costs that VZ is willing to do at this point - I've seen other deals where they'll offer a high-end phone, tablet, and wearable (for example, iPhone15, iPad, and AppleWatch) for a 2 year contract commitment...
Click to expand...
I get these emails often from Verizon, offering everything and the kitchen sink to come back. We switched to Xfinity Mobile a few years ago. We don't often use a lot of cellular data, but when we do, it's a lot cheaper now. Not to mention the bill can often be only $15 total for the two of us when the VZW bill used to be about $80. Since Xfinity Mobile uses the VZW network I suppose they are still making some money from us but I can't imagine a scenario where we will ever go back to VZW. They made tons of money off of us when the kids were around and we had 5 lines and the monthly bill was about $250.
 
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