The four largest wireless operators in the U.S. continue to pour billions of dollars every quarter into mobile network investment. Here is a brief summary on carrier network spending, from their third quarter 2014 reports unless otherwise noted:
— AT&T said its combined capital expenditures for wireless and wireline for the third quarter was $5.2 billion, spending $17 billion to date and expecting around $21 billion onm capex for the year. The company also noted that its operating expenses were up 7.5% in Q3 due to “higher equipment costs, network systems expenses and marketing costs” that were mostly due to its acquisition of Leap Wireless.
John Stephens, CFO of AT&T, told investors in the company’s quarterly call that AT&T reached its LTE target build during the third quarter, four months ahead of schedule, and that it now covers 300 million people. AT&T also reported that about two-thirds of its postpaid customer base uses LTE smartphones.
— T-Mobile US reported cash capex for property and equipment of around $3 billion for the year thus far, spending less than a billion dollars in each of the first two quarters and ramping up to $1.3 billion in Q3. The total figure for the year so far is down slightly from its $3.36 billion in capex spent during the same period last year. T-Mobile US already has reached its 2014 goal of covering 250 million people, and plans to reach 300 million in 2015. The carrier says it is “aggressively” rolling out LTE and wideband LTE on its 700 MHz A-block and 1900 MHz PCS spectrum.
At the same time, T-Mobile is shutting down parts of the CDMA network that it acquired with its purchase of MetroPCS, in areas including Boston, Las Vegas and Philadelphia.
— Verizon Communications spent $2.5 billion on mobile network investment during the third quarter. The company has spent $7.8 billion so far this year on its wireless network out of $12.6 billion combined capex for wireless and wireline networks. It is deploying additional capacity using AWS-1 spectrum, which it is calling XLTE, in more than 400 markets.
Fran Shammo, CFO of Verizon Communications, said during the company’s quarterly call that Verizon believes that “steady and consistent investments in networks and platforms” will fuel the company’s growth. Shammo noted in Verizon’s quarterly call that rather than ramping up spending significantly in the second half of the year as in past years, its capex has been fairly flat: $4.2 billion consolidated capex for the first quarter, $4.3 billion for the second, $4.1 billion for the third, and an expected $4.4 billion for the fourth quarter to bring it to $17 billion for the year.
— Sprint’s fiscal first quarter included reaching 254 million people with its LTE coverage, and largely completing the rip-and-replace of its legacy network. The company said that its Sprint Spark offering for improved data speeds launched with 22 devices in 27 markets and that it had completed field trials and was ramping up deployment of its 8T8R technology, or eight transmit/eight receive radios. Sprint added to that this week with the news that it has added 17 more Spark markets for a total of 46 and now has 38 devices available in its Spark portfolio.
The carrier says it is on-target to reach its goal of 100 million potential customers with coverage at 2.5 GHz by the end of the year, and said it had 800 MHz deployed to one-third of its footprint.
This story will be updated Nov. 3, when Sprint reports its most recent quarterly figures.
