T-Mobile official shares details about T-Priority offering, satellite-to-device progress

T-Mobile USA’s T-Priority service for first responders powered by 5G network-slicing technology will include a minimum bitrate for users, and the carrier is “light years ahead” of competitors in offering satellite-direct-to-device services, according to a company official.

Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer for the T-Mobile for Business unit, said that the T-Priority service announced earlier this month will be launched this fall, leveraging network-slicing technology enabled by the carrier’s 5G standalone (5G SA) core and its existing Wireless Priority Service-based priority and preemption.

“We’re using … traditional WPS enablement for the priority and preemption,” Katibeh said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Once you’re on the network—you’ve been prioritized or preempted other non-first-responder traffic to get on whatever spectrum band—it’s the [T-Priority network] slice that is allowing us to utilize effectively all of our bands to dynamically scale up and down as first responders, in any given situation in real time, require it to then manage the traffic on the network.

“It’s pretty extraordinary technology.”

In 2020, T-Mobile announced its Connecting Heroes program that offers free voice and text service to public-safety personnel, but company officials perceive the T-Priority as an “incremental offering” to the evolving first-responder sector, according to Katibeh.

“I think there is good recognition across the industry that first responders have been on this evolution from land mobile radios … to more modern smartphone-enabled devices,” he said. “Almost all of the use cases that are emerging right now are deeply reliant on data.

“Modern first-responder communications means that you need next-generation 5G data networks. Having a 5G standalone core really let us say, ‘Hey, how do we build on the promise of Connecting Heroes to something that give first responders what they need right now?’ We believed that we were pretty uniquely positioned to able to do that. You bring all of those things together, and we realized, ‘Hey, we can utilize slicing as a way to serve those needs.’”

This approach will allow T-Mobile to make a unique offer to its T-Priority customers, Katibeh said.

“Something that no one else in the industry has ever declared is a minimum bitrate for first responders,” Katibeh said. “What we’ve enabled is the ability to provide double the minimum bitrate for first responders versus what we’ve done historically. And by the way, we’re the only one that is even willing to publicize and talk about—and we’ve built the network to do this—a minimum bitrate.”

T-Mobile is not releasing its minimum-bitrate figure at this time, but “our intent is to publish that number” in the future, said Katibeh, who repeated noted that the T-Mobile 5G system has 40% more capacity than its U.S. rivals.

Similarly, T-Mobile is not yet releasing details about which City of New York agencies—for instance, the New York Police Department (NYPD) or the Fire Department of New York (FDNY)—will be using the T-Priority service as part of the contract announced earlier this month.

“We’re incredibly proud to have New York City as our anchor partner for T-Priority,” Katibeh said. “Inherently, by being an anchor partner, that means that there will be agencies that are eligible to use T-Priority based on first responders and those that support them.

“More to come in the coming weeks and months on details and more about what we’re doing with key customers on T-Priority.”

In addition to its data-throughput advantages, T-Mobile has made significant progress in its efforts to address terrestrial-network coverage gaps by working with SpaceX to deploy low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites that can support satellite-direct-to-device connectivity to any outdoor location in the U.S.

“There’s a half-million square miles out there that no one touches,” Katibeh said. “What we’re doing with SpaceX is something we see as the beginning of that journey to go address those really remote areas.”

Of course, T-Mobile and SpaceX are not the only U.S. carriers hoping to fill coverage gaps with satellite-direct-to-device service in the future. Both Verizon and AT&T have announced deals with AST SpaceMobile, which ultimately plans to deliver broadband-like experience to users on unmodified cellular devices.

However, while AST SpaceMobile recently launched its first five commercial LEO satellites, T-Mobile already has 175 satellites in orbit, according to Katibeh.

“Right now, we have 175 [LEO satellites] in orbit with SpaceX, and we have plans to add more in the coming months,” Katibeh said. “Compare our 175 to what anyone else has out there right now. I fundamentally believe … that we are leading this charge by a long shot, and we’re also preparing for a beta test that will focus on text messaging first, with future expansions in queue for data, voice and potentially other really interesting capabilities.”

Katibeh said the T-Mobile is “preparing for a beta test” of the satellite-direct-to-device capability but declined to provide a specific timeline for the effort at this time.