Hello all,

Just an editorial piece to get you by and prepare you for the upcoming slower deployment services. 

The US Wireless Deployment CapEx appears to be dropping sharply, as we all expected. For those of us in the business, be ready for some cuts. I don’t just mean by the carriers, but the contractors as well. We will need to tighten the financial bootstraps going forward.

Don’t let that dissuade you, just be cautious moving forward. I think we all expected the downturn to happen, but it’s always a shock when it happens. 

The carriers all warned us with their 1st quarter results, so this is no surprise to anyone paying attention.

The good news is that fixed wireless will continue and may even pick up. It may be 2024 before we see the market expand and grow, but both fiber (FTTX) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) will continue.

See below for the breakdown of notes.

T-Mobile US deployments

• TMUS site upgrades appear to be slowing as there is reduced CapEx spend. They seem to be pulling back a bit. I am sure they want to complete the backlog and maybe spend the rest of 2023 catching completing the backfill.
• New sites will only be there if they’re on the roadmap or a need arises.
• I have to admit, the Band 41 expansion went very well. As did the 600MHz. The Sprint migration (so far) was a success. 
• I would think for TMUS this is a year of downsizing and scaling back to a “business-as-usual” model. 
• TMUS is going to concentrate on other things like the MINT Mobile and Ultra Mobile Mergers. This was an expensive venture for TMUS and the FCC and SEC will need to approve. Link to FCC presentation here.
• We all know that the Sprint merger went well, but now TMUS will concentrate on cutting costs. I imagine that means cutting headcount.

AT&T growth

• AT&T already said that it will focus on fiber but the wireless will continue to grow, but maybe not exponentially. I think only where expansion is required.
• AT&T has said that the budget would remain the same, but let’s face it, they also said they’re going to focus on fiber. I don’t know if they mean that they will put more in fiber, but probably maintain wireless and no increase.
• The good news is that FirstNet spectrum was renewed by the FCC. What does this mean to deployment? Not much, unless they have to put in fill sites. I am guessing it will be targeted since AT&T already did a good job building it.
• I would think if you’re doing fiber, business as usual. 

Verizon growth

• Remember when Verizon said they would continue with the deployments? I think they will, but they won’t push as hard as they have been. I think they have to make budget cuts due to the poor sales performance. The bleeding of users seems to be a real problem.
• Appears to be scaling back the C Band deployment. They have commitments they need to keep but they have done a good job so far.
• As for mmWave, they also have commitments that may be very hard to meet. I don’t think the mmWave payback was worth it thus far, but time will tell. I don’t see a rush to upgrade all of it to 5G but it will have to be done sooner or later.
• I would think the fiber deployments will be normal.  

Tier 2 carriers need money;

• Oh, the Huawei swaps and the lack of funding. This is fun. Smaller carriers only care about the bottom line, and rightfully so. 
• From my perspective, this seems to be scaling down. The carriers want more money, I read over $3B is needed, and they want funding before they finish. I have no idea how many have completed the swaps; I would need to research this. 
• This is a priority, but quite a bit of it is done. This was a lot of work, and I don’t mean just the physical site work, but the core, the planning, the testing, and the tracking of every dime spent. What a tedious venture. 
• I have no idea when this will be 100% completed. I would like to think by mid-2024 at the latest, but who knows? It seems that tensions between the US and the PRC are at an all-time high. 

DISH pushing slowly;

• DISH? Are we still interested? Of course, many people are doing DISH work.
• They should be happy because they may be able to pay less now that the strain on resources is dropping. 
• I would think they’re looking to cut back on all expenses since things have been moving slowly. They appear to be dropping subs, that doesn’t help.
• They seem to be deploying at a good rate, yet they seem so far behind. I think the site acquisition has taken way longer than expected. I also think they’re relying on the MVNO income to keep them alive. 
• They also seem to have funding issues. Will they look to sell off before they even finish? Will the stock price go back up? We’ll have to wait and see. 

Cable Companies

• Cable companies seem to be making a push. They know this is the time for several reasons. Mostly costs and equipment. 
• First, the price of installers and integrators will finally begin to drop due to reduced demand.
• Second, equipment is readily available now that supply chain issues are being overcome and the US relies less and less on China. 
• Another thing to think about is automation for many integration tasks is starting to mature. I am not talking about Open RAN, which seems to be more expensive and much slower than anticipated, but I am talking about 4G and 5G small-cell deployments in general. They seem to be easier than ever, but still not plug-and-play. 
• They have a targeted approach, only in their smaller markets and all data for offload. It’s pretty straightforward. 

Private 4G/5G expansion

• Here is a market that is seeing growth, unfortunately, it’s growing way slower than the OEMs would like. 
• DAS is still a mainstay in most markets because so much investment is in the existing networks that to change would be crazy when you can spend just as much to upgrade.
• For some reason I see new DAS networks going in where a real small-cell private network would make sense. It’s not because of budgets since DAS is generally 2x or higher than the small cell solution. It’s not because of maintenance. It’s generally because the DAS players have better access to the users doing this than the OEMs or private network vendors. They have the customer’s ear!!
• Since the private network is new, there are not many devices on 5G and most private networks would like to see 5G from day one. This is a chicken and egg deal. Think about the IoT vendors & OEMs that hesitate to upgrade their devices so soon when they just made so many pushes to get PLTE devices out and that hasn’t even paid for itself yet. 
• Private networks require a new model, not the cookie-cutter models the carriers have. What does that mean? That means that each customer will need a somewhat specialized solution which leads to longer sales cycles, lower budgets, and larger sales and solutions teams. This all eats in profit. Lower profits make it look less and less attractive. I am just saying……
• Smart city finding is leaning more and more towards fiber, too bad for wireless.
• Rural broadband needs something like licensed 12 GHz PTMP links to make it.
• Unfortunately, the CBRS band has not lived up to the FCC requirements. 
• Keep your hopes up and maybe someday we’ll have a P5G sales boon, but that could be years away. Keep the faith!!

#5G #PLTE #Vz #ATT #TMO #TMUS #LTE #P5G #PrivateNetworks #Wireless #Deployments