WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2025 – AT&T’s impending price hike for home broadband does not apply to its fixed wireless customers, the company said Monday.
News outlets reported Friday that the company notified customers their broadband plans would increase by $5 per month starting Dec. 1. Asked by Broadband Breakfast, an AT&T spokesperson said fixed wireless customers were exempt from the increase.
The mobile carrier has about 1 million fixed wireless subscribers, compared to about 9.8 million fiber subscribers.
“As we work to meet the evolving needs of our business and manage increasing operational costs, we’re adjusting our internet plan rates to help maintain the high-quality service our customers expect,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “To help offset these changes, customers who have not already enrolled in Autopay and Paperless Billing can receive a $10 monthly discount by enrolling with an eligible bank account, or a $5 discount with a debit card.”
Customers that signed up within the last year and customers on AT&T’s $30-per-month plan for low-income households are also exempt from the price hike.
Fixed wireless broadband, which the major 5G carriers provide via excess spectrum capacity, has been competing well against cable, in large part because it tends to be cheaper. AT&T’s fixed wireless plans start at $60 with paperless billing and can go down to $47 per month when bundled with a mobile plan.
AT&T added 203,000 fixed wireless subscribers in the second quarter of 2025, a record for the company. New Street Research analysts expect the company to have beat that record in the third quarter with 230,000 new additions. The carrier will report its third quarter results Wednesday.
For AT&T, the service was initially considered a way of keeping subscribers around while the company replaced outdated copper lines with fiber, but it’s been steadily growing since the company launched it in August 2023. Pascal Desroches, the company’s CEO, said at a conference last month that AT&T would soon be “putting some real marketing muscle” behind its fixed wireless product.
The carrier is also in the process of buying $23 billion in spectrum from EchoStar, which would provide extra headroom to support more fixed wireless customers. New Street estimated the Echostar spectrum could support about 900,000 fixed wireless subs, which would, by the firm’s estimates, give AT&T enough spectrum capacity to handle about 6.3 million.
Verizon and T-Mobile were quicker to lean into the service. They count 5.1 million and 7.3 million fixed wireless subscribers respectively.
The cable giants, meanwhile, have been introducing price locks and promoting their mobile services in an effort to stem the continued subscriber losses. Comcast’s cheapest five-year price lock plan starts at $55 per month for download speeds of 400 megabits per second.
