T-Mobile US continues to attract subscribers to its 5G-based fixed-wireless access (FWA) service and remains confident that it can continue to support that growth without impacting network performance. That growth and accompanying financial input could help counter the nearly half-billion-dollar charge the carrier recorded tied to the 5,000 job cuts it announced early in the third quarter.

T-Mobile added approximately 500,000 new FWA connections during the third quarter, staying just ahead of its main rival Verizon in that specific space. That growth pushed T-Mobile's FWA base to 4.2 million total connections, or more than halfway to the 8 million FWA customers it says it can support on its 5G network based on current excess capacity.

CEO Mike Sievert told investors that the carrier remained confident in its ability to continue supporting that rapid growth based on its extensive spectrum holdings. He cited several tranches of mid-band spectrum the carrier had yet to put into service to bolster capacity and the carrier’s ability to re-farm spectrum currently being used to support its 4G LTE service.

“Lots of room to run as it relates to pouring new capacity into this network,” Sievert said. “That means we, right now at a broad scale, are not looking at alternatives to that from a wireless standpoint.”

Those alternatives could eventually include tapping into its millimeter-wave (mmWave) holdings that it’s currently using “pretty strategically in very dense places.” T-Mobile has also been looking at ways to use that propagation-challenged spectrum to serve so-called multi-dwelling units (MDUs).

T-Mobile has also been busy recently in expanding its access to spectrum licenses. Outside of the mid-band spectrum licenses it acquired during recent government spectrum auctions to help with capacity, it struck a deal with Comcast to purchase low-band 600 MHz spectrum licenses for up to $3.3 billion that will bolster network coverage, and a deal last year with a pair of 600 MHz license holders valued at $3.5 billion.

Sievert also provided more color on how T-Mobile dynamically addresses network capacity concerns. This includes its constant monitoring of network capacity per cell site, which can impact on a day-to-day basis the ability for new customers to sign up for the service.

“If three people in your neighborhood sign up, or four or five people depending on the sector, the whole neighborhood comes off our list until such time as we've got that excess capacity again,” he said.

Sievert also noted the carrier remains on the sidelines in terms of participating directly in the fiber space. The carrier has been rumored to be looking at investing or acquiring fiber assets to help better manage backhaul costs associated with expanded customer data usage.

“We like this business model and to the extent we make investments or partnerships in the area our view is it should be capital light, generally off-balance sheet,” Sievert said. “Speculation I know is out there. I can clarify we're not the partner to Jana [Partners] in the transaction that was rumored a couple of weeks ago. … We remain interested in partnerships like the kinds we have rolled out pilots around and other constructs that are generally capital light, generally off-balance sheet. That's for a reason. We're performing really well and demonstrating through our tests as well as our broad-scale performance in 5G home broadband that our brand and our team belong in this space and we can create value.”

T-Mobile's rivals Verizon and AT&T have been more proactive in fiber ownership with their executives highlighting the cost benefit of controlling those fiber assets.

Sievert did note that T-Mobile’s enterprise customer base has a lower average revenue per user than its consumer base, but is usually a longer-lasting customer, which results in having a higher lifetime value.

“We continually look at the customer lifetime value net of all the cost to serve these customers and find that enterprise customers are highly attractive and therefore contributing to our financial results,” Sievert said.

Sievert was more cagey with how the carrier's private wireless business is penetrating the enterprise space, coyly stating the carrier “is quietly serving customers.”

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg earlier this week said he does not expect private networks to start contributing “any significant revenues that have an impact on Verizon overall in 2024. We’re going to see that in 2025.”

Sievert also seemed to counter ongoing claims that wireless operators have not been able to monetize their 5G network deployments. He pointed to the industry producing cash flow and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) “much higher than five years ago while at the same time customers are enjoying three times more data at four times higher speeds while paying just a fraction of the price-per-unit consumed versus before.”

“That's the win-win 5G dividend nobody's talking about,” Sievert said.

One issue many people have been talking about was the 5,000 job cuts T-Mobile announced in August. Those cuts represented approximately 7% of the carrier’s total employee base, with most of the losses impacting corporate, back office and technology roles.

The carrier took a $471 million charge on those cuts during the quarter, with T-Mobile management stating new technologies – like artificial intelligence (AI) – will allow the carrier to recoup that cost and find greater financial benefits.

“We're not the only company that has noticed this, but the technology landscape around us is rapidly changing,” Sievert said. “That means there's an opportunity for us in our post-integration era as we plot the next chapter to think about re-crafting our company, taking advantage of the technologies that are now available to us to become much more deeply data informed, much more AI-enabled, much more digital first. … That's taking up a lot of our team's time and attention now to reimagine how can we create a business model that really creates a fantastic experience for each customer individually, but at the same time is more efficient to operate and that's where we have ambitions.”