T-Mobile is positioning its next phase of network expansion around 6G and physical artificial intelligence, with the US telecom operator announcing its ambition to become the 1st carrier to launch 6G services in the country. The company also reiterated that it has no plans to enter an MVNO partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink for consumer services or physical and edge AI applications.
During its Q3 earnings call, T-Mobile outlined its long-term network strategy, pointing to 2030 as the expected timeframe for the development of 6G networks. However, the company did not announce a specific launch date.
“2030 will see 6G networks being built and T-Mobile will be the first with 6G in this country with new applications like integrated sensing and communications [ISAC]. 6G will be the first G, where the basestations and radios behave as radars … that opens up a lot of new use cases with remote sensing … that I think is going to drive a lot of usage as well,” said John Saw, Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile.
Saw also expects mobile traffic patterns to change significantly by 2030 as AI adoption increases. He described future traffic as “still downlink heavy but increasingly uplink rich,” driven by AI wearables, AI agents and the expected growth of physical AI devices, including humanoid robots, delivery drones, vehicles and factory machines.
Upcoming spectrum auctions covering the upper C-band and 2.7GHz frequencies could provide T-Mobile with additional capacity for 6G deployment and improved uplink bandwidth.
Ahead of its quarterly results, Saw also discussed the company’s physical AI initiatives, which include collaborations involving Figure AI’s humanoid robots, Serve Robotics’ delivery robots and 5G-connected cameras deployed in San Jose.
T-Mobile has also partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop initial versions of its “kinetic edge” platform. The initiative combines T-Mobile’s 5G-Advanced network and distributed edge infrastructure with AWS cloud orchestration and AI services. The objective is to bring “deterministic connectivity, compute and intelligence closer to where machines operate.”
CEO Srini Gopalan said these projects demonstrate how T-Mobile is moving beyond providing eSIM connectivity for humanoid robots towards “testing how the network helps deliver the intelligence itself.”
However, he acknowledged that physical AI remains in its “very early innings” in terms of potential revenue opportunities and associated costs for telecom operators.
Gopalan also pointed to the expected growth of connected machines by 2035, stating that “whether we’re going to see millions of robots, drones, all sorts of other connected moving objects. That’s kind of a given when you future-cast the world. Now the question is, what kind of infrastructure do you need to support that?”
Despite its existing relationship with SpaceX, T-Mobile continues to rule out an MVNO arrangement with the satellite operator.
“We’ve been very clear that in terms of satellite, we see it as a complementary product,” Gopalan said. “If we’re talking about SpaceX as a customer or us being a customer of them, that’s a purely commercial agreement. But the answer to the MVNO [question] is I see no room for an MVNO with SpaceX either on the consumer side or on the physical and edge AI side.”
The Q3 results also arrived amid leadership and ownership developments. Former CEO Mike Sievert is stepping down as vice chairman of T-Mobile’s board on November 1, 1 year after handing over the CEO position to Gopalan. Separately, Bloomberg reported that parent company Deutsche Telekom had paused plans for a full takeover of its US operation, partly due to opposition from its works council and some T-Mobile executives.
Financial and subscriber performance
T-Mobile reported the following financial results for Q3:
- Service revenue: Increased 6% year-on-year to $19.4 billion, supported by higher postpaid service revenue, including contributions from the UScellular and Metronet acquisitions completed in Q3 last year. Lower prepaid service revenue partly offset the growth.
- Postpaid service revenue: Increased 9% to $16.3 billion.
- Adjusted EBITDA: Rose 11% to $9.6 billion.
On the subscriber front, T-Mobile reported 274,000 net postpaid account additions, representing a 3% year-on-year increase and taking its total to 35 million. The additions were slightly lower than the 277,000 recorded in Q2.
The company attributed the modest decline to higher broadband-only customer churn and changes to its rate plans. It now reports account additions rather than separate net additions for mobile, fixed wireless access and fibre services.
Average revenue per account increased 4% to $155.73, while postpaid account churn rose 12 basis points to 1.09%.
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