The News: T-Mobile, and Cradlepoint, part of Ericsson, are joining forces to deliver an enterprise-grade custom-designed all-in-one 5G router for T-Mobile Business Internet customers. Together, the partnership looks to deliver a fixed wireless solution tailored to organizations that depend on fast, flexible, and secure internet with managed services for their business operations. Now, businesses with single or multiple retail, multi-tenant office, and remote work locations nationwide have more flexibility to consider T-Mobile Business Internet. Read the T-Mobile Press Release here.
T-Mobile and Cradlepoint Aim to Streamline Business Adoption of 5G FWA
Analyst Take: The news of T-Mobile and Cradlepoint joining forces is a boost to business adoption of 5G FWA services. I view the combination of Cradlepoint’s custom-designed E320 5G router and NetCloud Service with T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G footprint and managed services as critical to spurring business adoption of these services, including rural areas dealing with digital divide barriers. To help accelerate 5G FWA adoption, the E320 5G router is designed to only takes minutes to install and run, with the goal of bringing businesses the speed, flexibility, security, and managed services they require.
I find it refreshing that T-Mobile is again taking aim at Comcast as an integral component of its recent Internet Freedom launch and the expansion of its T-Mobile Business Internet nationwide. Specifically, T-Mobile emphasized that businesses pay $55 more per month for Comcast’s 100 Mbps plan than consumers, and the only major differences are that businesses get a static IP address, and their service is called “Business Internet.”
Moreover, businesses with multiple locations across the country are forced to navigate a patchwork of providers, all with different contracts, prices, policies, equipment, service level agreements, and customer care teams simply to get Internet in their remote offices and stores. For many multi-site businesses this process can prove exceptionally intricate and costly to manage — and T-Mobile is proving that it doesn’t have to be that way.
T-Mobile is offering to connect all the stores and remote offices of businesses across the country, anywhere within its wireless footprint. From my view, this helps T-Mobile sharply differentiate its Business Internet offering and can help accelerate overall 5G FWA adoption.
Through the T-Mobile Business Internet alliance, I see Cradlepoint gaining a sales and marketing boost for its 5G Solutions for Business portfolio. The portfolio stresses using 5G routers and adapters to give businesses the flexible Wireless WAN connectivity key to delivering 5G programmability, ultra-low latency, and greater broadband speeds across fixed and temporary locations, vehicles, and IoT applications.
Overall, I believe the new T-Mobile Business alliance provides additional warrant for Ericsson’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Cradlepoint in September 2020. The move was met with some industry skepticism, however the E320 router offering demonstrates that the 5G game is a long game and can reward players such as Ericsson with the patience to take advantage of 5G breakthroughs when the opportunities arise.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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Image Credit: T-Mobile
Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.
