AT&T Adds 270,000 Fixed Wireless, 288,000 Fiber Subs

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2025 – AT&T added 270,000 fixed wireless subscribers in the third quarter of 2025, the company announced Wednesday.

That’s the most since the company began widely offering the service in 2023, and brings its total to more than 1.2 million. The number outpaced Wall Street expectations of 208,000 and doubled additions from the same quarter last year.

The carrier had initially talked about the service as a way of keeping customers on board in places where it was replacing outdated copper lines with fiber, but fixed wireless has become a part of AT&T’s plan to push bundled home and mobile broadband. AT&T CEO John Stankey said on the company’s earnings call that 50 percent of the company’s fixed wireless subscribers also take mobile service.

The company is also in the process of buying $23 billion in spectrum licenses from EchoStar, including 3.45 GigaHertz (GHZ) spectrum that will give it more capacity to support additional fixed wireless customers.

“As this spectrum is deployed and as we become more aggressive with marketing, that’s another pool of value that we’re really excited about,” CFO Pascal Desroches said.

Still, bundling mobile and fixed wireless might not be a silver bullet for achieving convergence in areas where the company doesn’t have fiber – which is most of the country – MoffettNathanson founder Craig Moffett told investors in a Wednesday note.

Even with the extra EchoStar airwaves, AT&T will have “substantially less excess capacity a year from now as it had three years ago when its initial purchase of 3.45 GHz spectrum closed,” he wrote. “At the time of AT&T’s first 3.45 GHz purchase in 2020, you’ll recall, the company concluded that it didn’t have sufficient capacity to offer Internet Air widely.”

AT&T is actually already in the process of lighting up that spectrum through a leasing agreement, Stankey said. He said the company would have deployed the band at cell sites covering nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population by mid-November.

He said the quick lease agreement reflected the Federal Communications Commission’s “pro-investment and supportive policy environment.”

The carrier expected fixed wireless additions to be affected somewhat by factors that usually push down broadband additions in the fourth quarter. Households are typically busy with other things and less likely to change ISPs at that time of year, Stankey said.

Fiber, mobile

The wireless carrier also counted 288,000 new fiber subscribers, for a total of more than 10.1 million. That’s up from 226,000 in the same period last year and above Wall Street’s forecast of 265,000.

AT&T also passed 30 million fiber passings in the third quarter, already meeting its goal for the end of 2025. The company is aiming for 60 million fiber passings by 2030, including its Gigapower joint venture with BlackRock and its purchase of Lumen’s consumer fiber business.

Stankey said the Lumen deal was now expected to close in early 2026, apparently sooner than the mid-2026 close date the companies had initially targeted.

Among AT&T fiber customers, more than 41 percent also take a mobile line, which the company was pleased with.

“These customers remain our most valuable, with the lowest churn profile and highest lifetime values,” Stankey said.

Last week, AT&T told customers a $5 increase in its wireline broadband prices would take effect in December. That would amount to an annual increase of nearly 7 percent compared to about 3 percent among cable operators, Moffett noted. The cable giants are instituting lower cost plans and price locks in a bid to stave off broadband losses and address customer frustration over price increases after promotions.

The carrier added 405,000 postpaid mobile lines, more than analysts had predicted.

Asked by an analyst if SpaceX could potentially compete with the terrestrial 5G providers after buying its own chunk of EchoStar’s airwaves, Stankey downplayed the idea. He said the satellite company’s direct-to-device service would play a more complementary role.

He also downplayed the idea that the other wireless carriers are going to compete much more aggressively for mobile customers after Verizon and T-Mobile announced CEO changes this month.

“Just because there’s been a change at the top, I don’t know that that suggests to me that there’s going to be a 180 degree posture change,” he said.

New Street Research analysts said in a note that while new Verizon CEO Dan Schulman is expected to be particularly aggressive, the odds of a full-on price war could be low.

“We believe Verizon wants to communicate business change is coming with a new CEO, but at the same time understands that lighting the neighborhood on fire in which they own the largest house is not the smart path forward,” they wrote.

Verizon has the most mobile subscribers in the United States. The company will report its third quarter earnings on Oct. 29.