T-Mobile unveiled a venture capital fund called T-Mobile Ventures that will invest in companies building 5G-related products and services for the T-Mobile network in areas including edge compute, security, future of work, and industrial IoT.
Portfolio companies will get access to T-Mobile’s infrastructure, expertise, and dollars. The fund has already invested in startups including Mojio, a connected mobility platform, and Circle, a screen time management solution.
“With our 5G network at the foundation, we see massive opportunity across both business and consumer segments, and we’re excited to help fuel the wave of 5G applications coming to market in the years ahead,” Jason Young, senior vice president of partnerships and T-Mobile Ventures, said in a statement.
T-Mobile is also funding the 5G Open Innovation Lab, a startup program that launched last year with additional support from Intel, NASA, and other corporate partners.
5G is the next generation of wireless service that is expected to pave the way for smarter cities, faster downloads, self-driving cars, and countless other innovations that are hard to predict, just as tech stalwarts such as Uber and Snapchat couldn’t be anticipated until 4G and LTE made their business models possible.
Speaking last week after Apple’s iPhone 12 unveiling event, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said T-Mobile has a 5G edge over other carriers because of its mid-band strategy. 5G features three different radio signals: low, mid, and high band frequencies.
Just laid out the REAL 5G iPhone story on @CNBC and that story is midband 5G.
Dedicated 5G midband is what’s going bring the #iPhone12 to life AND what’s going to transform how you use your phone over the next decade … and @TMobile is the only one that’s got it?? pic.twitter.com/pOc7GnVImp
— Mike Sievert (@MikeSievert) October 13, 2020
Fierce Wireless reported that T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G “offers a tantalizing combination of speed and range unavailable from AT&T and Verizon.” The company’s blockbuster acquisition of Sprint in April helped it acquire much more mid-band 5G, which Sievert called “transformational” because of its speed capabilities.
T-Mobile reported $17.7 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $0.09 in its most recent quarter. It also announced in August that it had leapfrogged AT&T and is now the nation’s No. 2 wireless provider. T-Mobile now has 98.3 million customers with the addition of Sprint subscribers, ranking second in the U.S. behind Verizon.
