- SuperBroadband combines T-Mobile’s 5G FWA network with access to Starlink’s broadband satellite constellation
- The service is aimed at businesses like hospitality, retail and oil/gas
- Plans start at $250. “We’ve made it quite configurable and customizable,” T-Mobile’s Mo Katibeh told Fierce
T-Mobile today unveiled SuperBroadband, a new service that combines T-Mobile’s 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) network with Starlink Broadband satellite connectivity for businesses.
The service underwent beta trials and is already being used in sectors like hospitality, healthcare, retail and oil and gas.
It’s a white glove service, where T-Mobile for Business owns the customer relationship and will deploy the on-site equipment and Starlink Kit. Ericsson is the lead vendor on routers and outdoor adapters, but T-Mobile said it’s expanding the ecosystem to include partners like Inseego.
“We take care of all the installations for the customer, whether it’s one location or hundreds or thousands,” T-Mobile EVP and EVP and Chief Business Marketing Officer Mo Katibeh told Fierce. “Literally any size business can buy it.”
Plans start at $250. Higher-tier plans add capabilities like outdoor 5G equipment, advanced routing and higher-performance Starlink Kit. Customers can also customize their solution with options like always-on Starlink data, depending on what they need.
“We’ve made it quite configurable and customizable,” Katibeh said.
He declined to comment on whether the deal is exclusive.
T-Mobile SuperBroadband for business
The service was created to address three main pain points: redundancy, coverage and complexity, he said.
“We built this solution from the ground up and the sky down to deliver virtually unbreakable connectivity,” he said. “This is really two parallel paths, with 5G and Starlink satellite, that in no way, shape or form depends on one another, which makes this the most resilient broadband solution in the market today.”
Internet connectivity is so crucial for some businesses that they have more than one back-up service. That’s because they can’t afford downtime, he said, citing IDC data showing that financial losses can add up to more than $100,000 an hour across industries.
The router switches between links if it senses downtime on FWA or satellite. “The whole point of two fully diverse links is to ensure if one of the links is ever not available, the router will seamlessly failover to the other one,” he said.
T-Mobile’s answer to convergence?
AT&T and Verizon talk a lot about convergence and how they’re all for lighting up more fiber. T-Mobile is doing some fiber joint ventures but it’s not quite as aggressive.
Is T-Mobile’s strategy to use satellite in lieu of fiber?
“The way I think about it is SuperBroadband provides a compelling alternative and in many scenarios can act as a primary connection,” he said.
“Fiber is not wholistically available to the majority of business locations today. In those scenarios, SuperBroadband can be the primary connection or … if a business has access to fiber and also wants to use SuperBroadband, they can certainly do that” as a secondary connection, he said.
Of course, he’s got a point about fiber not being available everywhere. By the time AT&T is done expanding its fiber footprint, it will have a converged offering that covers no more than about a third of the U.S., according to analysts at MoffettNathanson.
A T-Mobile spokesperson said SuperBroadband was designed to be a wireless-first solution and includes 5G and Starlink at launch. However, if a customer wants to integrate fiber, they can do that.
What about satellite as threat?
Given this involves a combination of terrestrial wireless and satellite, we had to ask about the competitive environment. Elon Musk has said Starlink Mobile isn’t going to displace terrestrial mobile carriers, but a lot of people view SpaceX/Starlink as a threat hanging over the terrestrial U.S. wireless industry.
In the direct-to-device (D2D) space, “Starlink is a great partner and we’ve been working closely with them on the shared vision of ensuring that there’s zero coverage gaps” in the 500,000 square miles of the U.S. where no terrestrial cellular service exists, Katibeh said.
On the broadband side, “here we are announcing this partnership for a new category of broadband, the first nationwide broadband solution that can serve every single ZIP code in America,” he said. “Sounds like a good partnership to me.”