FWA and fiber fuel outsized broadband subscriber growth at AT&T

　　Accelerating fixed wireless access (FWA) subscriber adds and steady fiber customer growth combined to drive solid broadband results for AT&T in the third quarter of 2025.

　　Internet Air, AT&T's flagship 5G FWA offering, pulled in 270,000 new subscribers, pushing that total to 1.27 million. Internet Air adds in Q3 were well above the 203,000 gained in the prior quarter and the 110,000 added in the year-ago period. Analysts were expecting AT&T to add just 209,000 FWA subs in the period.

　　That could spell bad news for cable operators that are struggling to improve broadband subscriber trends. "The higher-than-expected Internet Air net adds will be perceived as a negative for the Cable industry," David Barden, analyst with New Street Research, explained in a research note (registration required).

　　Accelerating FWA subscriber growth comes ahead of AT&T's plan to deploy 3.45GHz mid-band spectrum, which it is acquiring from EchoStar. That spectrum will enable AT&T to broaden the reach of Internet Air, which is available today in parts of 47 states.

　　AT&T is starting to deploy EchoStar's 3.45GHz spectrum ahead of the deal's close, thanks to a short-term spectrum manager lease arrangement. CEO John Stankey noted that AT&T has begun to deploy 3.45GHz spectrum from EchoStar and expects to have it rolled out to cell sites covering about two-thirds of the US population by mid-November. AT&T is also acquiring about 20MHz of 600MHz low-band spectrum from EchoStar, but that piece of the deployment will take years.

　　AT&T's FWA subscriber surge is largely coming from the residential side of the business. Stankey said AT&T is working to ramp up access to small and mid-sized business customers as it works with its third-party channel partners for the SMB segment.

　　AT&T is also using Internet Air to retain DSL subscribers, which comes as the operator moves ahead with a major copper network shutdown initiative. AT&T is also using FWA to gain customers ahead of future fiber network rollouts.

　　Fiber base grows to 10.12 million subs

　　Turning to wireline, AT&T tacked on 288,000 fiber subscribers in Q3, giving it 10.12 million subs and a penetration rate of 40%. Analysts expected AT&T to add 265,000 fiber subs in the quarter.

　　AT&T built fiber to an additional 900,000 locations in the quarter, broadening its fiber footprint to 31.2 million. AT&T's current plan is to deploy fiber to 60 million locations by 2030 via a combination of deployments in its legacy wireline footprint, locations built by the Gigapower joint venture with BlackRock, and the fiber assets that AT&T is acquiring from Lumen (the Lumen deal is expected to close in early 2026).

　　AT&T's fiber gains were paired with a non-fiber loss of 56,000 subscribers, narrowed from a year-ago loss of 197,000.

　　With residential wireline and FWA combined, AT&T added 232,000 consumer broadband subscribers, up from a year-ago gain of 28,000. Stankey said this represented AT&T's highest total broadband net additions in more than eight years.

　　Sidestepping the succession question

　　Stankey dodged an analyst question about potential succession plans at AT&T, and whether Stankey would eventually shift to the chairman role and the company might slot in current COO Jeff McElfresh as CEO. That chatter stems from the recent CEO swap at Verizon. Stankey said it was a "nice question," but he didn't take the bait.

　　"We've focused on what we need to do operate our business every day right now. We don't have those distractions that others have," he said, noting that he's focused on making sure his management team is on top of their priorities and execution. "That's all we're worried about. We're not worried about your question."

　　Financial snapshot

　　AT&T pulled in Q3 revenues of $30.71 billion, up 1.6% year-over-year, in line with expectations of $30.85 billion. Consumer wireline revenues rose 4.1% to $3.55 billion and fiber revenues surged 16.8% to $2.2 billion. Non-fiber revenues were $872 million, down from $986 million a year earlier.

　　Broadband average revenue per unit (ARPU) was $71.23, up from $65.98 a year earlier. Fiber ARPU was $73.48, up from $66.61.

　　AT&T ended the quarter with 135,670 employees, down 5.5% year-over-year.

　　AT&T closed the sale of its remaining stake in DirecTV in July. That brought in $320 million in cash in Q3. AT&T expects to receive another $3.8 billion of cash over Q4 2025 and into the early part of 2026, said CFO Pascal Desroches.