T-Mobile Added Around Half A Million 5G Home Internet Customers

T-Mobile had another positive quarter, adding over a million and a half subscribers across mobile and internet services while leading its rivals on growing 5G home internet customer base.

The biggest gains were in mobile, the carrier announced during its third quarter earnings call. The carrier added 854,000 postpaid phone net subscribers, a metric of success the industry uses to forecast dependable revenue, while its network now reaches 250 million people with its baseline Ultra Capacity 5G.

T-Mobile noted that the company was rapidly moving toward standalone 5G, though they didn’t say exactly when the carrier’s 5G service would stop relying on it 4G LTE network. “5G is more and more becoming the network,” Mike Katz, T-Mobile chief marketing officer, said during the call.  

The carrier’s internet business also racked up more customers, reporting 578,000 net added subscribers which were “primarily solely fixed wireless access” according to T-Mobile. That’s still likely higher than the 342,000 net added subscribers for Verizon’s fixed wireless internet service this quarter (of which 234,000 were consumer subscribers), giving T-Mobile the edge for expanding its 5G home internet customer base this quarter. 

While T-Mobile is largely offering home broadband nationwide over its wireless network, it has been exploring a fiber offering including running a trial in New York City. The carrier did not break out how many users are on each broadband service.  

“If there are opportunities that could maximize our growth and further strengthen our position in this industry, we’ll be open-minded,” read a T-Mobile statement sent to CNET.

T-Mobile reported service revenue of $15.4 billion, a growth of 4% year over year, though that broke down to 40 cents of diluted earnings per share — a 27% decrease from the same period last year. The carrier attributed that to shutting down its 3G network and other costs related to the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, which was finalized over two years ago, and losses from the upcoming sale of T-Mobile’s wireline business. But shareholders still fared better than the 4 cents per share that Yahoo analysts predicted.

In end of day trading, T-Mobile stocks were up over 4% in after-hours trading.