Are T-Mobile and Verizon mobile customers suffering because of home internet subscribers?

AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon provide an alternative to digital subscriber line (DSL), cable, and fiber internet in the form of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). The tech utilizes a nearby 5G network to offer stationary internet connections to homes and offices. Connectivity intelligence firm Ookla's latest report details how the services from the three stack up against each other and whether the addition of more FWA customers negatively impacts mobile customers.

T-Mobile's FWA comes out on top when it comes to performance. Median download speeds offered by the company increased more than 50 percent from 134.99 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 205.44 Mbps in Q4 2024.

Cumulatively, the speeds have increased 3x since the launch of T-Mobile's FWA service in 2021. T-Mobile now boasts 6.43 million FWA subscribers. The increase in median download speeds despite the addition of more subscribers has dispelled concerns that the growth in subscribers would impact speeds.

Upload speeds, which impact activities like online meetings and file sharing, increased 9 percent from 19.88 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 21.68 Mbps in Q4 2024. Latency or lag, which affects real-time apps such as online gaming and meetings, also declined on T-Mobile's network from 61 milliseconds (ms) in Q3 2023 to 52 ms in Q4 2024.

It was feared that since the same 5G spectrum was used for providing service to both mobile and FWA subscribers, an increase in FWA customers would adversely affect the experience of both sets of customers.

The company's CEO Mike Sievert, who a recent report suggests might be let go, provided reassurance regarding network performance during the Q4 2024 earnings call. He said that the company's system identifies congested towers and it uses an algorithm to offer the service in only areas with excess capacity. This is the reason why T-Mobile Home Internet has such a long waitlist.

Verizon has over 4.3 million FWA customers and it also began providing the service in 2021. It saw its median speeds increase more than 12 percent from 132.55 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 150.47 Mbps in Q4 2024. The company's median upload speeds increased 7 percent from 12.84 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 13.88 in Q4 2024. Latency increased a bit from 52 ms in Q4 2023 to 53 ms in Q4 2024.

Verizon manages network capacity by capping download speeds at 300 Mbps. While T-Mobile says that it limits speeds for customers who use more than 1.2 TB of data per month during times of congestion, it doesn't seem to be capping speeds for the time being.