UScellular eyes infrastructure funds for fixed wireless expansion

UScellular lost more postpaid customers in the fourth quarter of 2021 – about 12,000 – on top of the 8,000 it lost in the third quarter of 2021. “We have to continue to do better,” said UScellular President and CEO Laurent Therivel. But the company's share of gross adds was quite strong in 2021, particularly in the fourth quarter. “It’s really a churn story,” Therivel said. “The churn dynamic is going to be affected by the upgrade promotions. We’re going to be launching a new approach to upgrades in the second quarter,” driven by a personalization engine that will do much more targeted digital outreach to customers, he said.  The plan calls for continued investment in growth areas like prepaid, business and government and towers. And the expectation is the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) will go a long way toward helping meet its goals. UScellular is unique among wireless carriers in that it still owns its towers and while it’s not a huge piece of revenue at this time, it expects that will change. And in terms of fixed wireless, UScellular is clearly on that train, as are its bigger rivals in wireless, such as T-Mobile and Verizon, which are aggressively marketing their 5G home broadband services like never before. “We’re rolling out that fixed wireless service without infrastructure subsidies,” Therivel said. “We’re doing so steadily, gradually. We’ve got the service live in market in a couple of states. You can expect to kind of see some gradual expansion there.”