The top three fixed wireless access (FWA) providers had a mixed bag during the middle of 2025, according to a new report posted by Ookla.
The good news for the providers — T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T — is that they added subscribers. On the flip side, the trio saw their median speeds decline.
The three added 1.04 million subscribers during the third quarter. This brought the number of subscribers to 14.7 million — approximately 12.5% of the 117.4 million broadband households in the United States.
The report found declines in upload and download speeds for the three fixed wireless carriers. The question is whether this is a seasonable pattern. The commentary notes that a similar pattern was seen during the second and third quarters in 2024 (with the exception that T-Mobile saw no download speed decline). It also is possible that the strong uptake is beginning to affect performance.
Other highlights from the fixed wireless report:
- T-Mobile’s median download speed of 209.06 Mbps in the third quarter 2025 is approximately double AT&T’s median download speed of 104.63 Mbps during the quarter.
- AT&T and T-Mobile customers in the 10th percentile of users are experiencing speed declines during the late afternoon and evening. Verizon subscribers in the 10th percentile don’t have such declines. This suggests its speed caps may be enabling a more consistent experience.
- AT&T Internet Air’s latency is higher than its peers, but it’s improving. In the third quarter, AT&T’s median latency was 67 milliseconds (ms) compared to Verizon at 54 ms and T-Mobile at 50 ms. However, AT&T’s latency is improving every quarter from a high of 78 ms in the third quarter of 2024.
The popularity of FWA likely will grow as the service improves. In June, J.D. Power released a report saying that customers in the U.S. were paying a little more for wired internet than a year earlier whether or not they choose to bundle with other services, but are paying a little less for fixed wireless internet compared to a few months ago.
The challenge to the FWA segment is growing without being a victim of its own success. The Broadband Forum evidently is working to avoid problems. Late last month, it published a report describing how a single 5G fixed wireless connection can provide multiple tenants with gigabit broadband connections by reusing the building’s existing infrastructure.
