T-Mobile and two local fiber providers comprise a consortium that walked away with Louisiana's biggest BEAD award. But the mobile network operator isn't saying what it plans to do in the state.
T-Mobile is part of the consortium that won Louisiana's biggest Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) award. However, the company declined to provide much detail about the role it's playing.
"We'll be bringing wireless service on our 5G network," a T-Mobile representative wrote in response to questions from Light Reading on what T-Mobile plans to do via BEAD in Louisiana. The representative declined to provide details.
Thus, it's not clear whether T-Mobile is funding the consortium, or whether it will provide fixed wireless or mobile services to Louisiana's BEAD locations.
Interestingly, T-Mobile in April announced it completed a $290 million 5G network upgrade across the state. Moreover, Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican Louisiana Senator since 2017, was pivotal in getting Congress to pass legislation earlier this year that shifted more 2.5GHz spectrum to T-Mobile.
The consortium
Louisiana this week awarded the vast majority of its BEAD funding to fiber providers, mostly eschewing satellite and fixed wireless providers. The state's awards, open for public comment through December 10, make Louisiana the first state to award funding through the Biden administration's $42.5 billion BEAD program.
The largest single recipient of the state's BEAD awards is an entity dubbed "Louisiana Local Fiber Consortium," which picked up $450.5 million to cover 76,815 locations. That award dwarfed those for other recipients such as Conexon Connect ($65 million to cover 8,489 locations) and AT&T ($54.9 million to cover 20,073 locations).
According to local reports, the Louisiana Local Fiber Consortium is made up of Swyft Fiber, REV and T-Mobile. Swyft Fiber and REV are both based in Louisiana and specialize in connecting rural areas with fiber Internet services.
T-Mobile "will be offering mobile service to broadband customers of the consortium," wrote the financial analysts at New Street Research in a note to investors this week. "We suspect they will also be a broadband service provider on networks built and operated by the two broadband companies that are part of the consortium (though we don't know). We suspect they aren't committing funding (though we don't know)."
A fiber race
T-Mobile has previously indicated its interest in obtaining BEAD funding. "Lumos is considering BEAD funding as a part of its expansion strategy and other opportunities for public-private partnerships," a Lumos representative told Light Reading earlier this year.
Lumos is the joint venture (JV) between private equity firm EQT and mobile network operator T-Mobile covering parts of the Mid-Atlantic including North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina. T-Mobile has a similar agreement with KKR for Metronet to expand Metronet's fiber footprint in parts of 17 states.
Broadly, T-Mobile has been partnering with smaller fiber operators across the US in order to sell T-Mobile-branded fiber connections in dozens of locations around the country. So far T-Mobile hasn't discussed the financial implications of pairing its wireless services with fiber offerings.
But T-Mobile's rivals have talked at length about that kind of convergence.
Verizon, for example, has said that its wireless market share is 5% higher in some markets where it also offers fiber. The company has also recorded a 50% reduction in churn (customers disconnecting service) in its mobile business when it bundles that service with fiber. AT&T officials have pointed to similar benefits.
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