T-Mobile's Bet on Mid-Band Driving Its 5G Success, Says CEO

T-Mobile is leading in 5G because it predicted correctly the latest generation of wireless would unfold in mid-band, not millimeter-wave frequencies, said CEO Mike Sievert at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Wednesday. Verizon led on 4G in the last decade and “we've jumped out in the 5G era with a lead in 5G,” he said.

Competitors “were absolutely dedicated to the idea” that 5G would be built using high-band, Sievert said. “We made a bet that it would unfold at mid-band,” he said. Two years ago, T-Mobile completed its buy of Sprint, he noted. “Sprint had absolutely a treasure trove of mid-band spectrum, but was a struggling company, financially strained, but with incredible assets,” he said. Ten years ago T-Mobile was “a distant #4 and shrinking,” he said. T-Mobile is now “a rapidly growing #2,” he said. T-Mobile is using 2.5 GHz spectrum once owned by Sprint for part of its 5G build.

At the start of the 4G era, people asked why they needed more capacity on their phones. Sievert said. “Apple created the iPhone and Android phones came, and suddenly we had Uber, and we had Snapchat, and we had TikTok and we have social media on people’s phones because of 4G technology,” he said: “That same thing is starting to happen in 5G.”

T-Mobile picked up fiber assets from Sprint but hasn’t decided whether to build more, Sievert said. “We’re still not in last-mile fiber, haven’t ruled it out,” he said. “Right now valuations are very high,” he said. Some companies will be more interested because of government funds targeting fiber, he said.

Sievert said many still have an “outdated” perception of T-Mobile’s network, which doesn’t take into account recent investments. This year the carrier is spending the most ever in capital expenditures, and 2021 had the second-highest investments, he said. Before the COVID-19 pandemic “you might have tried T-Mobile, and it was completely different than now, and that’s kind of our marketing burden,” he said. T-Mobile now covers all but 15 million people in the U.S. with some level of 5G coverage, he said.

The companies that will benefit from 5G are those that take “very high capacity, very low latency, meaning fast response times, into the mobile realm,” Sievert said. “Gaming on mobile devices also had a disadvantage, until now,” he said. Sievert said he was in Washington to meet with government leaders and has meetings scheduled throughout the day Thursday. Two of his top topics now are T-Mobile’s interest in federal infrastructure spending and taxation, he said.

Every region of the world has mmW spectrum and the “call to action” for carriers is to make it available on top of mid-band “in order to have the best quality of experience wherever your subscribers are,” said Philippe Poggianti, Qualcomm France vice president-business development, during a Qualcomm webinar Wednesday. In a country the size of the U.K., a carrier can bring high-band to 24% of its customers with just 2,000 “hot zones,” he said.

More than 50 vendors support mmW for smartphones, other smart devices, hot spots and PCs, Poggianti said. “This is an extremely mature ecosystem,” he said. Some cheaper models of phones using mmW are starting to become available, he said. High-band is being used for agriculture in the U.K., 8K broadcast in Brazil and China, transit hubs in France, and for smart cities and factories worldwide, he said. Poggianti said a Qualcomm survey found most subscribers are willing to pay $7 more monthly for mmW if they can get a faster connection.

The advantage of mmW isn’t the peaks in connection speeds but a “uniform” experience for customers even in congested areas, said Vikas Dhingra, Qualcomm Technologies senior director-business development. “It may be stadiums, train stations, airports, indoor malls, outdoor hot zones, busy streets” where mmW “can really help you [in] providing consistent and seamless user experience,” he said.