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Regional carrier C Spire developed in-house, AI-boosted capacity planning models to extend 5G FWA availability to 500,000 extra homes in Mississippi.
Regional carrier C Spire opened 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) to 500,000 more homes in Mississippi using its own AI-boosted capacity planning models and recent mobile network upgrades.
C Spire launched the 5G Home Internet offering in January 2025 to provide broadband service to households outside its fiber footprint. Since then, the carrier's data scientists and mobile network planners have refined their models for determining how much spare capacity the 5G network has for FWA and how many customers it can serve.
The "advanced capacity planning model" is the result of about ten years of development work after using and comparing other companies' models, Alan Jones, C Spire's chief network officer, told Light Reading.
"By adding AI into the mix ... we're able to more accurately predict where our capacity constraints are going to come from ... and how it shifts throughout the day between tower to tower, site to site, customer to customer. All those things we've been able to really get a clean, advanced view on," he said.
The carrier has long used a predictive, machine learning model for capacity planning and recently started using AI for finetuning and additional insights. It takes raw data from its radio access network vendor (Nokia) and transport vendors (Nokia, mostly, as well as Fujitsu).
To use the carrier's full description of the in-house capacity modeling tool: "It is an AI/ML-driven geospatial platform for network observability and decision support. It combines network KPIs, capacity forecasts, subscriber penetration, churn, backhaul and fiber network data in one interactive map." The various automated inputs refresh daily and hourly.
"It fits perfectly into how we see traffic in a converged network between our fiber operations and our wireless RAN operations," said Jones, noting it can monitor FWA across both radio access and transport.
With a more accurate view of network capacity, C Spire can offer 5G FWA to half a million more homes beyond the reach of fiber that it would not have been able to serve. It is already seeing results.
Jones said FWA sales are three-times higher than before it updated the capacity model and enlarged the target market. The carrier is getting "close to 1,000 sales per month," he said.
Further, C Spire recently added the 5G FWA service to its converged wireless and fiber offering, The One Plan, which is also boosting takeup. Customers can now choose FWA or fiber along with their mobile plan.
C Spire does not disclose subscriber numbers but said that about 14% of its customer base is on a converged plan.
The 5G Home Internet service uses Inseego's 5G Wavemaker FX3110 indoor cellular router and fits with the carrier's goal for a "purely self-install" as well as being "easy to fail," said Jones. That is, even though C Spire does pre-planning for a "good success rate," if there is any kind of radiofrequency anomaly that affects the customer's FWA service, the equipment return is designed to be easy and quick.
"The simplicity of the install and the onboarding of the customer was big to us, especially as we've added it to The One Plan," he said.
The ramp in FWA availability is also helped by some recent 5G network upgrades. A new batch of 36 sites were just upgraded to 5G, within the total 1,300 cell sites. The carrier said about two-thirds of its 4G footprint is now covered by 5G.