Rosenworcel: Fixed Wireless Driving Broadband Competition
FCC Chairwoman says 'a lot of households are signing up.'
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2024 - Internet delivered by fixed wireless access providers has its critics, but Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel is not one of them.
Rosenworcel noted in a wide-ranging interview with the San Francisco Examiner that the emergence of fixed-wireless broadband is providing significant competitive pressure on incumbent broadband providers.
"(...) The emergence of fixed-wireless systems, I think, is providing some real competitive pressure on a lot of incumbent broadband providers today," Rosenworcel said
Fixed-wireless broadband has long been dismissed as a competitive threat by cable providers, who claim the technology can’t keep up with consumers’ growing data consumption habits.
Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey has argued that fixed-wireless broadband is destined for technological obsolescence, calling it “cell phone Internet” or “another form of DSL.”
Rosenworcel said that the numbers suggest fixed wireless has become an alternative to landline broadband. “A lot of households are signing up,” she said.
At the end of the second quarter, T-Mobile had 5.5 million fixed wireless access subscribers and Verizon had 3.8 million.
Rosenworcel did not share the same enthusiasm for satellite-delivered internet by Starlink. She noted that competition to cable broadband “might” come from satellites, though she thought that a multimodal world of competition would likely arise in the future.
Broadband Breakfast reported Monday that Elon Musk’s Starlink has four million subscribers globally.
