T-Mobile US’ fiber ambitions hit an expansion milestone with its Metronet joint venture now connecting to three million homes and businesses, an extension that T-Mobile US management sees as an avenue toward first-to-market revenues.

Metronet’s fiber-optic network reach now extends to more than 300 communities across 19 states. The network provides multigigabit network speeds through both a wholesale model and in support of T-Mobile US’ Fiber business.

The broadband provider noted that it took 17 years to reach one million locations, an additional two years to reach two million locations, and just over one additional year to reach the three-million location milestone. That growth has been helped by a handful of acquisitions, including its purchase of Minnesota-based US Internet in September.

Metronet’s latest growth spurt has also come under the guise of joint owners T-Mobile US and investment firm KKR, which moved on purchasing the fiber provider in mid-2024. That deal closed in July.

That deal followed shortly after T-Mobile US closed on a joint venture with EQT Infrastructure to purchase fiber provider Lumos. Those two deals provide T-Mobile U.S. with a fiber network passing approximately 15 million locations.

T-Mobile US has so far been modest with its fiber expectations. The carrier’s fiber reach pales in comparison to rivals Verizon and AT&T, which have themselves spent billions over the past year to bolster their fiber footprints.

T-Mobile US’ then CEO Mike Sievert told investors during the carrier’s second-quarter earnings call that it expects to add at least 100,000 net new fiber connections by the end of this year.

T-Mobile US’ fiber ambitions

Despite those modest expectations, the carrier maintains a healthy view of its operations.

Jon Freier, president of T-Mobile US’ consumer group, touted the carrier’s broadband progress during the recent Wells Fargo TMT Summit. Freier noted the carrier counted nearly nine million overall broadband connections, making it the fifth-largest broadband provider in the U.S.

“And when you look at where we are on fixed-wireless, and we've said, ‘hey, we'll be at 12 million by the end of 2028.’ … And when you think about that 12 million in the context of households passed at like basically a 40% penetration, kind of like 30 million households, if you think about that as a households passed,” Freier said. “Then in addition to what you just said, between the Lumos and the Metronet transactions, ultimately having 12 million to 15 million households passed, we're kind of in this 40 million to 45-million household pass zone in terms of the equivalent.”

Freier added that this fiber angle allows “an opportunity to make money and to go build kind of first to fiber or nearly first to fiber markets.”

That expanding fiber footprint will become increasingly important toward that opportunity, especially as consumption continues to grow. Freier noted that T-Mobile US’ “mainstream” fixed-wireless access (FWA) customers are using up to 600 gigabytes per month of data, and FWA is “great for them.”

“Customers that are using terabytes; one, two, three terabytes per month, fiber is probably the right product for them,” Freier explained. “And where we can move customers into fiber in those particular areas to free up capacity, not to have a one-for-one replacement, but potentially to have two, three, four-to-one replacement, that's what we want to be able to do.”

Of course, those plans will now be under the purview of newly installed CEO Srini Gopalan, who tipped his leadership plans during the carrier’s most recent earnings call.

“We're really excited by the broadband opportunity. This plays to the heart of the un-carrier,” Gopalan said, referencing T-Mobile US’ legacy pitch as a carrier willing to shake up the market. “What we've got here is customers in a place where they have an inferior product, quite often, where they're paying a huge premium. It's classic un-carrier territory: going in and attacking incumbents who have not invested in their networks and who are charging a large premium for a product that isn't living up to expectations. Now we'll go after that with both FWA as well with as well as fiber. We see those as complementary, and the way we think about both those businesses is setting them up in a way that the economics allow us to pursue.”