T-Mobile officials said the company uses AI technology and billions of data points to determine exactly how to upgrade and expand its network. Company representatives call the effort "customer-driven coverage" and said it's a strategy T-Mobile has put into action after developing it for more than a year.
"It's an algorithmic methodology based on AI, where we're using billions and billions of data points that we are assessing from customer experience data across the network," T-Mobile's networking chief Ulf Ewaldsson said during the operator's quarterly conference call Wednesday.
"We're correlating that with business data and with real customer outcomes – in other words, what customers decide to do on our network," he continued. "And then we are assigning a CLV value, a customer lifetime value, to a grid across the country – more than four million little hexagons that we have created across the country, 165-meter-wide hexagons – we are assigning those values relative to competition to allow us to know exactly where we can build to please customers."
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the operator's approach could involve very targeted 5G network upgrades and tweaks.
"We have tens of thousands of future projects that get ranked, based on some practical concerns like zoning and permitting, but mostly based on the outputs from our AI-driven algorithmic model called customer driven coverage," he said. "And the result of that will be that we will stay ahead of the demand curve."
Interestingly, Ewaldsson said T-Mobile's approach also involves adding the operator's C-band spectrum into locations where it might be needed for additional capacity. He said T-Mobile so far has deployed 60% of its C-band spectrum holdings.
But T-Mobile has determined that its midband 3.45GHz spectrum holdings do not fit into its 5G plan. The company recently agreed to sell all of its 3.45GHz holdings, mostly to Columbia Capital.
On the other hand, T-Mobile now has the option to add 800 MHz spectrum into to its network as well.
After EchoStar's Dish Network dropped plans to purchase a 13.5MHz nationwide chunk of T-Mobile's 800MHz spectrum for $3.6 billion, the company put the spectrum up for auction this summer. Company officials said no bidder qualified to purchase the spectrum, thereby leaving it with T-Mobile.
T-Mobile officials said the company has yet to decide whether to use that spectrum in its network or sell it.
6G and AI
Sievert, T-Mobile's CEO, also addressed a question about the next generation of wireless technology beyond 5G, and how T-Mobile might approach it.
"Yes, there's a potential big [network upgrade] cycle coming, but on the other hand, it may be a cycle that's fundamentally more efficient to roll out than prior cycles," Sievert said.
He pointed to T-Mobile's new work with Nvidia, Ericsson and Nokia for an AI-powered radio access networking.
"This allows you to offset potential future costs ... with fundamental efficiencies," he said. "This next cycle may be more efficient than the big, verticalized 5G cycle was."
Sievert added: "I think the future bodes very nicely for 6G. ... We intend to be a company that drives the future on 6G as well. And that's why we've struck our unique partnership with Ericsson, Nokia and Nvidia to help invent AI - RAN and bring the future about in a way that disproportionately benefits T-Mobile customers."
The quarterly results
In its third quarter, T-Mobile recorded postpaid net phone customer additions of 865,000 – a figure well ahead of those from AT&T and Verizon during the period.
T-Mobile attributed its momentum in the quarter to prepaid customer migrations to postpaid plans, as well as lower churn and higher gross customer additions.
T-Mobile also reported adding 415,000 more fixed wireless access customers, roughly in line with its previous quarters' additions.
In terms of financials, T-Mobile's service revenues grew 5% year over year to $16.7 billion, and its postpaid service revenues reached $13.3 billion, up 8% year-over-year.
Finally, the company raised its guidance for the remainder of 2024. T-Mobile said it now expects to gain 5.6 million to 5.8 million postpaid net customer additions, up from its prior expectations of 5.4 million to 5.7 million. The company also raised its earnings expectations for the full year.
Source: https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/t-mobile-uses-algorithmic-ai-to-guide-5g-expansion