This was the week the American wireless market showed two very different visions of its future on the same day. On February 11, T-Mobile used a combined earnings call and Capital Markets Day in New York to raise its multi-year targets, posting $71.3 billion in full-year service revenue and setting a goal of 18 to 19 million broadband customers by 2030 across fixed wireless and its growing fiber joint ventures. Hours later, US Mobile, one of the most inventive MVNOs in the country, launched Multi-Network functionality that lets a customer run two national networks at once on a single plan through dual eSIM. One company is spending tens of billions to own infrastructure, the other is treating that infrastructure as an interchangeable ingredient. Rounding out the week, Iridium reported full-year 2025 results on February 12, with $871.7 million in revenue and growing net income, a reminder that the original satellite operators are quietly profitable while the direct-to-cell newcomers burn capital.
A week of endings and arguments. AOL announced it will shut down its dial-up internet service on September 30 after more than three decades, closing the era that introduced America to the online world. On August 12 NTIA released two MITRE-commissioned reports arguing that smarter receivers, not just more spectrum, are key to squeezing more capacity out of crowded airwaves. And AST SpaceMobile's S-band spectrum acquisition drew analyst fire, with one prominent assessment calling the ITU priority rights largely worthless and igniting a debate over what orbital spectrum positions are really worth.
An era ended on a Friday. On August 1 T-Mobile completed its 4.4 billion dollar acquisition of UScellular's wireless operations and select spectrum, absorbing the last major regional carrier's customers and stores while UScellular lives on as a tower and spectrum company. The close came one week after the FCC's July 24 open meeting, where commissioners unanimously adopted a rulemaking to accelerate the retirement of copper networks, formally starting the countdown on the century-old phone plant. And AT&T's Internet Air fixed wireless service posted another 200,000-plus customer quarter, evidence that even the carrier most committed to fiber keeps finding demand for wireless broadband it once dismissed.
June opened with EchoStar deepening its game of financial chicken, skipping roughly 183 million dollars in interest payments on its DISH DBS notes on June 2 and blaming the FCC's review of its spectrum licenses for freezing its ability to make decisions. T-Mobile, meanwhile, formally became a fiber company, launching T-Mobile Fiber home internet nationwide on June 5 with a five-year price guarantee, the consumer-facing debut of its Lumos and Metronet joint ventures. And the month's regulatory docket filled in around them, with spectrum sharing studies, satellite items, and the EchoStar proceeding dominating the FCC's June calendar.
Christmas week delivered a signed law, a longer casualty list, and a stress test nobody framed as one. President Biden signed the 895 billion dollar defense bill on December 23, finally funding the 3 billion dollar rip-and-replace program and setting the spectrum studies that feed the next auction pipeline. Four days later the White House confirmed a ninth US telecom had fallen to Salt Typhoon, attributing the breadth of the compromise to plainly inadequate carrier security. And on Christmas Day, 65 million Americans watched NFL football over Netflix instead of broadcast towers, the largest live sports streaming audience on record and a quiet referendum on whether the nation's broadband was ready for appointment television.