T-Mobile and Inseego Partner to Strengthen Enterprise FWA Value Proposition

As Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services have continued to mature globally, especially in the 5G era, greater focus has been placed on the opportunity for operators to address enterprise connectivity needs, especially for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). In the United States, all Tier One operators have spoken about the opportunity they see with FWA. As of 1Q 2025, Verizon has over 1.9 million business FWA customers, accounting for almost 40% of its entire FWA customer base. In quarterly earnings calls, T-Mobile, which has the largest FWA service in the United States, has spoken about how it has been able to continue to grow its subscriber base growth due to continued improvements to its 5G network and innovations in Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) technology, as well as its goals to grow its enterprise FWA customer base.

In May 2025, Inseego announced the launch of its first 5G-Advanced FWA solution, the Inseego Wavemaker™ FX4100, alongside the Wavemaker™ X700, a mesh Wi-Fi solution. Both of these products were designed exclusively for T-Mobile for Business customers. The FX4100 is powered by Qualcomm’s Dragonwing™ FWA Gen 3 Platform, supporting both 5G Standalone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) modes, as well as Long Term Evolution (LTE) Cat 20 for seamless connectivity across a wide range of spectrum bands. Other key features include 3CA Downlink and 2CA Uplink to ensure smooth video calls, advanced security features such as OpenVPN, and a small display so that customers can test their CPE speed.

As the U.S. FWA market is incredibly mature compared to other regions, operators are looking for ways to differentiate their offerings. Verizon has been investing in developing a new Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) FWA solution, especially for the enterprise FWA market, in order to catch legacy copper network customers and this solution is set to become available sometime during 2025. AT&T, while having, by far, the smallest FWA network of the big three operators, has continually reiterated its focus with fiber-first and FWA opportunism, and its CPE portfolio is reflective on this position, with its commercial launch of an integrated 5G and fiber CPE for its enterprise offerings (with 5G FWA as a backup connectivity in a singular device) in early 2025.

As of now, no operator in the United States has a dedicated network slice for FWA, whether that be consumer or enterprise. Around the world, a few operators have begun using network slicing to enhance their FWA services. Elisa in Finland offers a dedicated network slice for its premium customers, with a guarantee of performance parity with its own fiber offerings, and therefore, a similar Average Revenue per User (ARPU). In India, Reliance Jio uses a network slice for all of its FWA customers and has scaled its subscriber base to over 4.8 million as of January 2025.

Given that network slicing is a major focus area for T-Mobile in 2025, as it promises more slicing deals beyond its T-Priority service and a broadcasting slice for Disney Studios StudioLAB, it would be unsurprising to see a dedicated network slice for a specific segment of enterprise FWA customers for T-Mobile. This would provide T-Mobile with a unique value proposition compared to its competition in the United States. It already has 5G-Advanced rolled out nationwide and can use the latest solutions, such as Inseego’s FX4100, to provide stronger performance. The fact that the X700 was developed together with the 5G CPE suggests that the target vertical for the solution is enterprises with large open spaces, such as branches or municipal offices, as they are likely to utilize video calls regularly and a network slice can ensure a guaranteed performance level.

T-Mobile’s commitment to strengthening its enterprise FWA portfolio is also indicative of the type of usage the service gets. AT&T’s customers are more likely to use FWA as a backup connectivity, so they are unlikely to demand a network slice and other value-added services. Verizon and T-Mobile both have strong enterprise FWA customer bases and have a varied mix of primary and backup connectivity usages.

The growth in importance of FWA for enterprise connectivity is not an isolated trend in the United States. Many operators are realizing that consumer FWA customers provide a similar ARPU to their mobile subscriptions, but consume around 20X to 30X more data per month, which greatly congests the network. Enterprise customers, on the other hand, consume much less per month and are generally willing to pay more for a broadband service, as well as having lower churn. ABI Research forecasts that enterprise FWA will account for around 11% of the entire FWA subscriber base in 2030, but will only account for 1.6% of the annual FWA data traffic by then.

The partnership between Inseego and T-Mobile is a great case study for how strengthening the relationship with operators and developing custom CPE solutions can help FWA vendors improve their revenue and brand recognition. T-Mobile has also worked closely with other FWA vendors such as Ericsson (formerly Cradlepoint), adding its X10 and E300 solutions in 2024. The main difference between the two deals is that Inseego developed a solution specifically for T-Mobile, whereas the Ericsson solutions are readily available for all operators. The capability to support network slicing for CPE solutions is going to become much more of a priority moving forward, so support for network slicing should be integrated across the majority of a vendor’s CPE portfolio.