5G is the 'largest existential threat to broadband providers,' and Verizon and T-Mobile could be about to win big

Hans Vestberg

Despite the hype, experts don't expect 5G speeds to seem that different from 4G LTE speeds for a while.
While mobile applications of 5G won't seem that different, 5G fixed wireless broadband could disrupt the cable industry, according to analysts.
Analysts see Verizon and T-Mobile as the biggest mobile carrier threats in the industry.

Conversations about wireless carriers' race toward 5G are ubiquitous. But the focus on the blazing speeds 5G is expected to eventually offer to mobile customers may be misplaced. Instead, the biggest impact of the technology may be delivering broadband within the home.

5G is the fifth — and next — generation of wireless technology. It's expected to deliver faster speed than the current 4G LTE standard. But analysts in the industry urge caution in overplaying the initial improvements from a mobile perspective.

"It becomes a marketing opportunity to deliver 5G," Michael Rollins, a telecom analyst at Citi, told Business Insider. "We expect the first mobile 5G deployment to look and feel a lot like 4G LTE, while there is a perception issue that 5G can be meaningfully faster."

Cable disruption

But 5G does have an opportunity for disruption much sooner in the fixed broadband market, according to Rollins. The Citi report pegs telecom companies and cable operators as businesses that could be displaced by wireless broadband solutions.

It's a threat the entire industry seems to be watching. "We see 5G fixed wireless broadband as the largest existential threat to broadband providers, by far," analysts at Cowen wrote in their quarterly cable update. "For now, the largest threats are coming from Verizon and TMobile."

On T-Mobile's second-quarter earnings call, the company said it expected to capture 10 million new broadband customers by 2024, a target that would be a large majority of the entire cable industry's broadband adds, according to Cowen.

Following that call, stocks for the cable industry were down 2.4%, on average.

And Verizon, the company leading the race to 5G deployment, plans to roll out 5G broadband service in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, California, this year.

Verizon also announced plans to give away free YouTube TV service and Apple TV 4K along with 5G service to customers in each of its four initial markets. The decision to offer bundling of residential broadband service and live TV implies that customers would be able to cut linear-TV subscriptions to get similar programming free, another apparent swing at cable.

The company certainly seems to have disruption of the cable industry in mind. 5G will give you "totally new innovation, how you can disrupt industries, change the way you're thinking about technologies," Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said on CNBC.

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