FWA hits middle age and gets boring

The fixed wireless access (FWA) market has largely matured, and it's no longer offering many surprises. As a result, the pressure the technology has put on the cable industry appears to be easing.

"We now have better insights into FWA collectively," wrote the financial analysts at New Street Research in a note to investors last month. The analysts now expect T-Mobile to gain around 1.45 million fixed wireless customers next year. Verizon ought to come in second with 1.3 million, and AT&T should gain around 550,000 fixed wireless customers during the course of 2025.

"This is down 0.3 million from 3.6 million [collectively] in 2024," they noted. "We expect [customer] adds at all three to decline in 2026 and beyond."

The analysts continued: "This is a big deal for cable. We have been expecting slower growth from T-Mobile and Verizon, but we didn't know what AT&T could ramp to. With better insight into AT&T, we now know that we are past the peak."

Others have reached similar conclusions.

"The impact of FWA will linger but has likely peaked," wrote the financial analysts at MoffettNathanson in a note to investors following the recent release of Comcast's quarterly results.

Comcast officials appeared to breathe a sigh of relief. "Fixed wireless has obviously taken its toll," the company's CFO, Jason Armstrong, said during Comcast's recent quarterly conference call. "We think that's a market that's going to continue to exist, continue to be around, but it's for the value-conscious consumer. It carved out a niche in the market – whether it's 10%, 15%, I'm not sure we've got a crystal ball – but it is a niche."

Setting expectations

Two of the nation's three big FWA providers have already outlined their FWA expectations for the future.

In September, T-Mobile forecasted it would expand its FWA business to 12 million customers by 2028, a 50% increase from its previous target of 7 to 8 million customers by 2025. Then, a month later, Verizon said it expected to double its own FWA subscriber target to a range of 8 million to 9 million by 2028. And a day later, AT&T confirmed it wouldn't speed up its FWA business much beyond the 135,000 customers it gained during the third quarter.

AT&T may provide more FWA details during its upcoming analyst and investor day in December.

In general, those figures indicate the nation's three big wireless network operators don't expect to significantly increase their FWA growth rates. In fact, their growth rates may moderate slightly compared with last year.

At the same time, each of the companies is also in the midst of a shift to fiber. AT&T is pursuing a massive fiber network buildout alongside at least one fiber joint venture (GigaPower, with BlackRock). Verizon is expanding its own fiber buildout, a move coupled with its proposed acquisition of fiber operator Frontier Communications. And T-Mobile is working to grow its own fiber business with various investments around the country.

The bottom line: FWA remains a key strategic offering, and will continue expanding. But it's no longer the unknown, shadowy agent of disruption that threatened the core Internet businesses of many of the nation's cable companies.

Not to be underestimated

That said, FWA is clearly here to say.

"If the three companies meet their growth goals, they will collectively have almost 20 million broadband customers in 2028 – almost as big as Charter or Comcast today," Doug Dawson of CCG Consulting wrote in an article outlining the FWA offerings from T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon.

"This growth is by far the biggest disruption of the traditional broadband industry, with FWA growth taking customers away from all other ISPs," Dawson noted.

Others agreed.

"FWA continues to be the only broadband technology in the US with customer growth," Tefficient, an analytics company, wrote on social media. The firm noted that T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and UScellular collectively added 919,000 FWA customers during the third quarter. The firm noted that, based on early results, wired fixed broadband providers collectively lost around 277,000 during the period.

"I think that there is a lot of wireless growth" left in fixed wireless, agreed Dylan Larmore, president of fixed wireless provider Sound Broadband. Sound, the fixed wireless business of regional telecom operator LICT Corp., counts around 100 fixed wireless transmission sites in locations across the country. It's one of thousands of smaller fixed wireless operators that collectively support several million Internet customers across the US.

"We've had a lot of success" in taking customers from DSL and cable operators, Larmore said. Sound's pricing starts at $50 per month, and it counts around 10,000 customers. The company is working to install 5G equipment – including radios from Ericsson – across much of its network (so far 13 of the company's sites today sport 5G equipment). On sites running in unlicensed spectrum, Sound is using equipment from Tarana Wireless.

"We prefer the 3GPP standards" like 5G, Larmore said, because then the operator isn't tied to proprietary equipment from a single vendor.

Broadly, Larmore said he sees a bright future for fixed wireless services in rural areas where building fiber doesn't make economic sense. Importantly, Sound offers only fixed wireless services and isn't selling FWA as a complement to a mobile offering, like Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T do.

"We've really seen fixed wireless as a strong opportunity to expand into rural areas," he said.

Sound isn't the only company chasing a fixed wireless-only business. For example, Starry continues to focus on urban areas with its own fixed wireless offering, and the company hopes to turn a profit starting next year.