T-Mobile trusts AI to make 5G network tweaks

For competitive reasons, wireless carriers typically don’t reveal too many specifics about their network expansion and upgrade plans. So when T-Mobile executives were asked during Wednesday’s Q3 earnings call to elaborate on their plans for mid-band 5G upgrades, they steered the conversation to the tools they use to determine how they’re going to expand coverage – as opposed to detailing exactly where and when they will deploy.

Their approach – and brace yourself, this is going to be a real shocker – is based on artificial intelligence (AI). In a nutshell, they’re using “billions and billions” of data points to assess what customers are experiencing across the country. That data gets assigned a customer lifetime value (CLV) and plotted on a grid across the country. Think millions of little hexagons across a map of the U.S.

“We are assigning those values relative to competition to allow us to know exactly where we can build to please customers,” said T-Mobile President of Technology Ulf Ewaldsson. “At the end of the day, this is not a POP drive where you’re just chasing populations and where populations live. It’s a much more complicated art to figure out exactly where customers will value most our build.”