CARTO > Case Studies > Leveraging Spatial Data for 5G Deployment: A T-Mobile Case Study

Leveraging Spatial Data for 5G Deployment: A T-Mobile Case Study

Technology Category

Networks & Connectivity - 5G
Networks & Connectivity - Radio Access Network

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing

About The Customer

T-Mobile US, Inc. is an American wireless network operator partly owned by German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom (DT). Its headquarters are located in Bellevue, Washington, in the Seattle metropolitan area, and Overland Park, Kansas, in the Kansas City metropolitan area. T-Mobile is the second-largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 108.7 million subscribers as of the end of Q4 2021. In 2021, T-Mobile launched its 5G home internet service, making it available to 30 million homes across the US.

The Challenge

T-Mobile, the second-largest wireless carrier in the United States, faced a significant challenge when it launched its 5G home internet service in early 2021. The service was made available to 30 million homes across the US, following a pilot period that began in 2019. The challenge lay in the fact that wireless internet for a fixed address requires a significantly different qualification process than a traditional internet service provider (ISP). Making informed decisions about candidacy required a large amount of spatial data. With 185 million unique addresses in the US, each with untold variables associated with them, T-Mobile needed to determine who was qualified for service. This included determining at an aggregate level which zip codes, MSAs, or states had the greatest potential.

The Solution

To address this challenge, T-Mobile built an internal analytics platform that leverages CARTO for processing and visualization. This platform helped them translate spatial data into actionable intelligence and provide services to allow enterprise channel sales and marketing partners to sell their products more effectively. Geospatial and network teams were able to calculate the capacity for delivering a consistent internet experience by analyzing the propagation of radio frequency to households within the cell site’s coverage footprint. T-Mobile was also able to predict the expected experience of a home internet customer by accounting for terrain and foliage interference from a tower or where a device must be positioned in their home. The use of CARTO APIs enabled business users in the organization with limited Data Science skills to explore data without having to worry about how to perform tasks related to common data aggregations or schema exploration.

Operational Impact

The implementation of the CARTO-based analytics platform has allowed T-Mobile to effectively analyze service qualification at scale. This has been made possible due to CARTO's comprehensive support for a wide range of functions and libraries, including spatial indexes. T-Mobile has been able to simplify large-scale challenges, such as converting radio frequency propagation into uniformly shaped hex bins. Furthermore, the use of CARTO APIs has empowered business users with limited data science skills to explore data without having to worry about how to perform tasks related to common data aggregations or schema exploration. This has enabled T-Mobile to build a creative solution to a complex industry problem with sufficient flexibility and scalability as they continue to grow their network.