- T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert recalled skepticism over his 2021 promise of millions of fixed wireless access customers
- The company now has 7.3M subscribers and is targeting 12M by 2028
- Similar doubts surfaced over T-Mobile’s direct-to-device satellite partnership with SpaceX, which now operates with 600+ satellites
MOBILE FUTURE FORWARD, SEATTLE — T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert compared his company’s experiences with fixed wireless access (FWA) to the emerging satellite-to-cell-phone market.
“It's really been a big surprise for a lot of people,” an assessment that applies to both FWA and direct-to-device (D2D) satellite services, he said during a keynote conversation here Thursday.
He recalled that his company’s Capital Markets Day in 2021 occurred during the Covid pandemic when many people were working from home. At the time, Sievert stood on stage, by himself, in an empty room, when he made a promise to the world that T-Mobile would have “millions of customers” using FWA by the end of 2025.
The response? “I think I said 7 to 8 million customers by 2025, and the number of people who believed that was near zero,” he said.
The fact that FWA, which uses wireless technology to deliver broadband into consumers’ homes, turned out to be far more successful than many people expected worked to T-Mobile’s advantage. Competitors underestimated them.
“Now we have this phenomenon, and it's very clear that, especially as 6G now is barreling toward us, fixed wireless is here to stay,” he said.
T-Mobile's FWA subscriber count was over 7.3 million as of the end of Q2 2025 . The company’s current FWA target is 12 million customers by the end of 2028.
Similarities in FWA, D2D
When T-Mobile struck its technology alliance for a D2D satellite service with SpaceX in 2022, the same kind of doubts were front and center.
Sievert harkened back to when he and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took the stage to announce the initiative. “We had a mutual dream that we could create direct connections to mobile phones, and we announced a tech alliance to essentially invent this capability,” he said. “A lot of people were like, ‘Well, I'll believe it when I see it.’”
Today, “this thing is incredibly powerful,” he said. “We have over 600 satellites and a dedicated constellation that are providing near real-time communications for customers.”
Hints about voice calls
The “vast majority” of text messages via T-Satellite are completed in just a few seconds, and “you can text anyone, essentially from anywhere,” as well as send pictures, he said.
Over the summer, T-Mobile announced that, beyond texting, a T-Satellite data service will be available in October, which he described as “light data” that will support certain applications that “respect the API,” or application programming interface. Those applications will work when the device is connected to a satellite, “so light versions of mapping applications,” he said.
Beyond messaging applications like iMessage and WhatsApp, T-Mobile has demonstrated voice calls on WhatsApp on a beta basis with the current satellite constellation, and “it works,” he said. But whether or not it gets rolled out past the beta stage will depend on what it looks like when people use it at scale, he added.
“We’re evaluating that,” he said. “But this is powerful,” and still early days. “Obviously, we're interested in seeing what we can what we can create in the future.”