Private wireless is a new and growing sector that has helped the traditional wireless industry grow over the past several years. It is offered by assorted companies, large and small including the top three wireless carriers.
Now, we are hearing that growth is slowing due to economic and political factors. What’s next? Will this slowdown be short-term? Will this new sector return to growth or even accelerate? Or will the slowdown persist in the long term?
The answer of course is we simply do not know yet. Over several decades, I have been an industry analyst in areas of communications technology, including wireless, telecom, pay TV, AI, IoT, Wi-Fi, broadband, satellite and so much more. I have watched the industry change many times for many reasons.
Whether private wireless and, for that matter, wireless broadband will crank back up and be the growth engines the wireless industry and it’s investors want and need and, if so, when is the question.
Private wireless and wireless broadband are growth avenues
I think both private 5G wireless and wireless broadband are potential sources for growth. That being said, the economy and politics always seem to work their way into every corner of our world.
In recent years, I have met with plenty of CEOs of competitors, large and small. There are, in fact, quite a few players in every corner of this new space. I am even hearing from small companies with big ideas to help cable TV providers offer wireless broadband to compete with this new wireless carrier service.
During the past decade the wireless industry has not grown like in the past. To battle this fact, there were all sorts of crazy moves like AT&T acquiring DirecTV, WarnerMedia, CNN, Warner Bros Studio and more. Verizon acquired AOL and Yahoo.
Both were trying to get into and monopolize the entertainment, news and shopping space. Needless to say, they were both failures, and they got back into the wireless business.
Next, 5G began, and we expected to see growth pick up like it had as the industry moved from one G to the next. This has happened before as the industry moved from one G to the next.
Remember when the first iPhone and Android hit the marketplace. We used Blackberry and a few apps. This was a whole new and different way to use wireless. After the industry pooled its resources, customers ultimately adopted this, and it has been successful for nearly two decades.
While there has been growth, in recent years with wireless broadband and private wireless, nevertheless the pace has been disappointing to most investors.
The version of private wireless offered by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon uses their public wireless network to offer a private wireless service. There are also plenty of smaller competitors in this space. Consider Juniper Networks, which is trying to merge with HPE. Or Celona, AWS, Boingo, Boldyn, or countless others, large and small?
I have visited with many. I see what they see. There is plenty of potential growth for competitors in these spaces.
The problem is in any new space companies need innovation and time. They need to stand out in the noisy crowd of competitors. That means they must scream from the mountaintops about who they are. They need to be seen and heard over the noise and chaos of other competitors doing the same thing.
Customers have been considering and testing a variety of different vendors and technologies. There is a wide variety of corporate and enterprise-level customers. This has fueled growth to an extent in recent years.
FWA is a new technology that lets wireless carriers offer wireless broadband to their business customers and consumers.
Hoping for growth
These new areas have begun to let wireless carriers show a new level of growth. Of course, this has caught the attention of the cable television companies like Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, Altice, Cox and countless others who depend on wired broadband to support their business.
In fact, broadband is their core business. This is creating a showdown between cable TV and wireless, which has yet to play out. We are still early in the change process. If successful, this could just be a temporary pullback. If not, well then this could last a while.
Based on what I hear from many senior level executives at different companies, we will just have to wait and see what happens next. Some are much more bullish than others.
So, while this is one helluva a ride we’re all on, if it all works out, tomorrow we could be in a much stronger position than ever before. In fact, if so, we could even see real acceleration moving forward.
Let’s hope these challenging and confusing times are short-lived and everything returns to normal or better, sooner rather than later.
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