Metronet is the new frontier of T-Mobile’s mobile and broadband bundling strategy, following the closing of the mobile operator’s joint venture with KKR to acquire the overbuilder in July 2025. Fixed wireless access (FWA) has been enormously successful for T-Mobile, so much so that they have increased their expected maximum subscriber base of 12 million users. However, T-Mobile is already at 7.3 million subscribers, and anticipates hitting that 12 million milestone by 2028. With 31.5 million postpaid accounts that could be targeted for converged services, T-Mobile is now in need of more capacity to grow its fixed broadband and wider converged strategy. Fiber represents the next step in that journey — and Metronet is the largest of T-Mobile’s new fiber acquisitions. Using Opensignal’s Broadband MarketVision Subscriber Analytics data, we examine how Metronet strengthens T-Mobile’s position in the converged mobile and broadband market.
Key findings:
- FWA’s potential growth is constrained, despite significant ongoing demand — T-Mobile is already at 7.3 million FWA subscribers out of its estimated maximum subscriber base of 12 million users, with over 1 million possible customers on its waitlist. If T-Mobile wants to pursue convergence across its 31.5 million postpaid accounts, it will need to find additional capacity.
- Metronet demonstrates a roadmap for successful market entry — Metronet has demonstrated rapid share gains when it enters a new market. In a comparison to other fiber overbuilders, it is one of the best at growing a significant market share in the six quarters following its initial launch of service.
- Nearly 15 million additional households in the United States fit Metronet’s rollout profile — this indicates that, should T-Mobile continue to follow Metronet’s playbook, these areas likely have similar rates of success and a similar ROI for T-Mobile as Metronet has seen in the past.
- Fiber can offset congestion concerns that limit FWA — higher T-Mobile RAN utilization in Metronet markets (6.2% of ZIP codes with markers of high RAN utilization vs. 2.4% nationwide) highlights how Metronet is already well-placed to offer service where cellular capacity may not support FWA demand.
T-Mobile’s shift to fiber — why now?
When T-Mobile’s FWA offering launched back in April 2021, it spurred significant change in the US fixed broadband market. Starting in mid 2022, FWA has absorbed all broadband subscriber growth in the US, largely at the expense of the big cablecos. Meanwhile, the additional competition is driving lower prices and better incentives as providers look to attract value-oriented consumers.
Building on its first-mover advantage, T-Mobile’s FWA reached 5.0% market share of the national fixed broadband market in the United States by the end of Q2 2025. However, the opportunity is not limitless. T-Mobile is already at 7.3 million subscribers out of its estimated maximum subscriber base of 12 million users. By T-Mobile’s estimations, it will reach this number by 2028. As such, it is prudent for T-Mobile to be thinking ahead on what its fixed broadband market presence will look like after this milestone is reached.
A total of 12 million users is also significantly less than T-Mobile’s postpaid mobile subscriber base — which totalled 31.5 million accounts in the six months ending June 30, 2025. While T-Mobile has historically expressed some scepticism about the importance of broadband to mobile convergence, existing mobile subscribers represent easy ground for advertising cross-sell onto fixed broadband services, and converged offerings have repeatedly been credited for reducing churn for mobile providers. However, offering such services requires T-Mobile to have the capacity to support them.
This capacity is also not uniform across the whole country. T-Mobile’s FWA rollout follows a “fallow-capacity model” — that is, making the most of existing network capacity that is otherwise underutilized, and closing sectors of cell sites to new fixed wireless subscribers when network utilization reaches a level that borders on compromising mobile subscribers’ experience. This highly targeted approach to capacity management has allowed T-Mobile to grow its FWA base rapidly without impacting the mobile experience of its wireless subscribers. This move has been successful, as can be seen in its ongoing improvements in 5G mobile experience, as well as overall Reliability, in our recent Mobile Network Experience report. However, this also limits the speed at which T-Mobile can meet FWA demand — leading to a waiting list in some areas despite capacity in others. While much more limited in its coverage footprint, fiber offers a solution to deliver higher capacity service in targeted areas to meet demand where FWA cannot.
Why Metronet?
At the point of acquisition, Metronet offered T-Mobile a footprint of over 2.6 million locations (homes and businesses) passed. However, its real value to T-Mobile has three components: a record of success, a pathway to scale T-Mobile’s fiber ambitions and a tool to relieve capacity constraints on FWA and enable continued growth from both access technologies.
While Metronet as a business has much to offer, it is also important to note that the deal is structured to add a fourth benefit for T-Mobile — optionality. The Metronet deal is a 50-50 joint venture with KKR, and Metronet is not being subsumed into T-Mobile. Rather T-Mobile is taking on Metronet’s residential subscribers and rebranding their service as T-Fiber, while Metronet remains as a wholesale infrastructure provider leasing access to T-Mobile and investing in ongoing build-out. This offers T-Mobile an exit ramp, should T-Mobile decide to unload its ownership stake. Given T-Mobile’s hesitancy around the potential benefits of convergence, this deal structure allows T-Mobile to test the benefits of a fiber offering and increased convergence within its customer base, without the balance sheet burden of either investing much more into its cellular network, or building out a fiber network itself.
Metronet playbook for market success
Metronet has proved it is capable of rapid market share growth. Compared to other fiber overbuilders, Metronet is one of the top performers when it comes to the market share it achieves in the six quarters after service launch. As one of the bigger overbuilders in the US, Metronet has proved it can rapidly grow market share repeatedly — something it has demonstrated over 20 years and 19 states, meeting the needs of a range of different sizes of market along the way. This track record for success makes Metronet highly attractive for T-Mobile as it looks to test the waters of the fiber market.
Competitive pricing as an attractor
A critical part of this strategy is pricing. Like other overbuilders, Metronet historically has entered markets with competitive pricing that undercuts the typical rates charged by cablecos, which it then supports with long pricing locks. This strategy of being a value leader should resonate well with T-Mobile, whose mobile strategy focuses on “being the best value in the marketplace”. T-Mobile is already pushing these incentives with its introductory offers around T-Fiber, including 5-year and 10-year pricing locks, and lower pricing for higher-end services than many other providers.
Targeting underserved markets provides a roadmap to scale T-Mobile’s fiber ambitions
Beyond pricing, Metronet’s success in winning market share also relies on market selection. Part of the reason it has been so successful in winning subscribers away from telcos and cablecos has been its focus on bringing services to areas where existing providers do not offer fiber, or where there is one or fewer high speed competitors.
Metronet also focuses predominantly on suburban areas – typically areas with small primary urban cores and then a larger suburban metro area. Within suburban areas, Metronet typically builds out in the highest density neighborhoods in order to maximize opportunity and minimize costs.
If Metronet continues to focus on its historical “sweet spot” of higher-density parts of suburban areas with moderate competition, there is a clear path for T-Mobile to achieve its ambitions of passing 12 million to 15 million households with fiber by the end of 2030. Based on our analysis of service territories across the United States, we can identify nearly 15 million homes passed that match the profile of Metronet’s previous roll-outs. This equates to about 12.8 million households — comfortably in line with T-Mobile’s goals.
Metronet’s existing fiber footprint can support T-Mobile FWA
One of the immediate benefits of the venture will be the capacity Metronet adds to serve customers where T-Mobile might not have enough wireless capacity to meet subscriber demand with FWA. 
Nationally, 2.4% of zip codes within T-Mobile’s FWA footprint show markers of high RAN utilization — meaning that jitter and packet loss fall below target thresholds during peak hours. However, within the Metronet footprint this is higher – with 6.2% of zip codes showing markers of high RAN utilization. This demonstrates how seamlessly Metronet can fit into T-Mobile’s existing broadband portfolio — providing capacity where it is needed most. If T-Mobile can offload some existing FWA customers onto fiber services, or encourage some of its FWA waitlist onto T-Fiber instead, this will free up capacity to enable more subscribers.
Looking ahead
This record of success in both market identification and share gain comes together in a final piece of the puzzle — Metronet has been very successful in building out in non-contiguous areas. This means building out service in specific pockets of a market where there is greater opportunity and limited competition, rather than building out service to cover the entirety of a larger media market. Metronet's top 10 counties make up only 38% of its footprint, significantly less than we see from other overbuilders like Google Fiber (where this figure is 75%), or Astound (58%). For T-Mobile, this highly focused rollout expertise enables a targeted two-pronged fiber and FWA strategy. Based on both its wireless subscriber numbers and existing waitlist for FWA, T-Mobile will be able to highlight clusters of potential high demand, which Metronet can then execute on. The combination of fiber and FWA would allow T-Mobile to use fiber to cover the denser areas with highest demand, and FWA to support along the outskirts, maximizing capacity and delivering service where it is most wanted.
In the near future, Metronet may also help T-Mobile to attack ground in areas which have traditionally been Verizon strongholds — reducing Verizon’s ability to form a strong converged presence in these areas. For example, Terre Haute (Indiana) and Minneapolis (Minnesota) both have high Verizon mobile market share, but also have a significant number of households that would fall within the typical profile that Metronet has targeted for previous roll-outs. Meanwhile, Omaha (Nebraska) has high Verizon wireless market share, an existing Metronet presence and more potential for expansion. Areas such as these could represent useful locations for Metronet to prioritise for wholesale buildouts to support T-Mobile’s wider fixed broadband and converged ambitions.
As all providers look to strengthen their converged positions, T-Mobile’s acquisition of Metronet means it is no longer just an FWA disruptor, but instead has a full service converged mobile and fixed broadband offering. Metronet brings more than its existing footprint; it offers a proven playbook for rapid market entry, share capture, and targeting of highly specific underserved suburban areas where fiber adoption potential is high. By pairing this expertise with its national wireless presence, T-Mobile stands to make a bold entrance into the fiber market.
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