- T-Mobile says upper C-band and 2.7 GHz could present another pivotal “leadership” moment – much like its early 5G push
- CEO Srini Gopalan said D2D traffic increased to only 0.0003% total network usage during the summer months, reinforcing D2D as a complementary service to terrestrial cellular
- T-Mobile isn’t seeing AI drive a surge in mobile traffic yet, but CTO John Saw says the network is ready if that changes
Like a lot of people in the wireless industry, T-Mobile is excited about the prospect of getting more spectrum via the upper C-band auction in 2027. But it’s also eyeing the 2.7 GHz auction in 2028.
However, T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan says it’s too early to tell which one will be more attractive.
“We're excited by both of them,” he said during the Q2 earnings call today. “We think we're approaching one of those moments, and the thing T-Mobile has been incredible at is waiting for those moments where we think this is the time for us to step in and really take a big lead” versus the competition.
The last time something like this happened was around the start of the 5G rollout, when T-Mobile made a conscious decision to say it was going to be the leader in 5G.
“We think we’re approaching a similar moment here,” he said. “6G is not going to just be 5G on steroids, but it’s also going to give us all sorts of opportunities like edge AI and physical AI.”
T-Mobile’s FWA, AI outlook
Gopalan and several other T-Mobile executives conducted the earnings webcast from New York City today. At one point, they were asked about traffic growth over the next few years and whether upper C-band spectrum would be used to support fixed wireless access (FWA) or AI workloads.
T-Mobile CTO John Saw said they’re not concerned about not having enough capacity for FWA.
As for AI traffic, the current growth in AI is focused on model training, large-scale agentic automations and heavy backend automation. “A lot of them actually are confined to wireline transport networks and massive data centers,” and they’re not putting a material strain on mobile networks, he said.
“We have not seen any surge in mobile traffic due to AI, even though every year we see mobile traffic going up, regardless of AI or not,” Saw said. “If AI traffic continues to grow, especially with the growth of physical AI, I think we are more than prepared.”
Ready when AI hits
One of the reasons T-Mobile rolled out 5G Advanced was to improve the uplink performance, especially in light of the predicted surge in AI mobile traffic.
“We have been able to improve uplink performance with uplink carrier aggregation, uplink MIMO, transmit switching” and that’s in part to deliver better uplink for future AI traffic they expect to see soon, Saw said.
T-Mobile has been diligent in its spectrum purchases lately. It wasn’t a big bidder in the recent AWS-3 auction that closed last month. That was a relatively small auction of 200 licenses and raised $3.5 billion in winning bids compared to the lower C-band auction, which brought in more than $80 billion in 2020.
Some would argue that the upper C-band (3.98-4.14 GHz) spectrum is less attractive than the lower C-band (3.7- 3.98 GHz) spectrum because it’s slightly higher on the spectrum range with poorer propagation. The 2.7 GHz spectrum might be an easier addition because it’s closer to T-Mobile’s treasure trove of 2.5 GHz that it inherited via the Sprint merger.
Some other D2D tidbits
Gopalan confirmed that T-Mobile’s direct-to-device (D2D) exclusivity with SpaceX’s Starlink does not expire this year, but he didn’t reveal exactly when it ends.
He talked about how T-Mobile worked with Starlink to basically invent the D2D category, and T-Mobile learned over the past four years that it's a complementary category.
Gopalan has talked in the past about how it makes up for only about 0.0002% of T-Mobile’s overall network usage, and today he said that even in the busiest summer months, usage went up to only 0.0003%. Most of the usage is in remote places like national parks.
Over time, it’s clear that D2D isn’t going to be a source of differentiation because all the big carriers are going to offer a version of it. “It's going to be table stakes as a complementary service to have satellite along with your cellular service,” he said.
AT&T and Verizon are both working with AST SpaceMobile and all three are involved in the D2D joint venture they announced earlier this year. That JV, by the way, was largely seen as a defensive move against SpaceX/Starlink Mobile edging further into the mobile space.
Looking forward, Gopalan said the JV allows for individual operators to have conversations and agreements with other parties and “our expectation is the vast majority [of D2D traffic] will be sourced through the JV.”
Overall, T-Mobile’s Q2 earnings were kind of a mixed bag. Postpaid account net additions of 277,000 beat analysts’ expectations but “this is the first quarter in some time where guidance did not rise across the board,” said New Street Research analyst David Barden in a note for investors.
Indeed, T-Mobile shares were trading down more than 6% at one point today, to $178.60. See our earlier coverage here.
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