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NEW DELHI: India’s 5G fixed broadband subscribers are expected to reach five million by the end of 2024, and double to 10 million in 2025, according to the latest report released by Counterpoint Research on Thursday. It noted that 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services will be crucial to bridging the digital divide in India, considering that fiber services are being rolled out at a slower pace and are expected to remain a laggard, by comparison, in terms of net additions in 2024 and 2025. “With more than 350 million households in India, fiber alone cannot reduce the digital divide in India, it will require a complementary technology that can provide adequate speed and capacity to cater to the masses,” said the research firm.
Advt Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio cornered 2.8 million 5G fixed broadband subscribers in the first half of 2024, leading over Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Airtel , Counterpoint said in the report. Reliance Jio and rival Bharti Airtel began offering the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services, JioAirFiber, and Xstream AirFiber, respectively, in key cities in Q4 2023.
While Jio opted for an outdoor-indoor consumer premises equipment (CPE)-router setup, Airtel offered an indoor CPE solution. The research firm said that Jio has covered 98% of districts in the country and plans to add more capacity in densely populated regions. Its strategy is to bring AirFiber to outskirts of urban areas, suburban, and rural areas, where its JioFiber fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) services are limited.
“The deployment of FWA services by Jio is unique as it is using one outdoor unit to provide FWA services to a maximum of six subscribers, reducing the upfront cost of CPE/user significantly,” Counterpoint said, explaining this method has allowed the telco price 5G FWA plans similar to its fiber offerings which eliminates price as a barrier to adoption for consumers. Kiran Thomas, President, Reliance Jio Infocomm, at Reliance Industries’ Q2FY25 post-earnings call said the telecom company was adding 0.6 million fixed broadband subscribers till the December 2023 quarter, and the 5G FWA service has helped triple this growth in the September 2024 quarter.
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we have now grown to nearly 3 million Jio AirFiber connections in a very short while, we are already one of the fastest growing fixed wireless operators globally and this is not where we want to stop,” Thomas had said, adding that Jio aspired to add a million homes every month for its AirFiber service. Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO of Bharti Airtel, at the telco’s Q2FY5 post-earnings call said that fiber will offer a “superior experience”, and Airtel will eventually convert “fixed wireless access to fiber once fiber reaches the location”. “This is driving continued fiberization.
We now have over 33.5 million home passes and continue to add over one-and-a-half million home passes every quarter,” Vittal had said. “.
..we have put in place algorithms to make sure that our fiber roll out goes in on priority into those places where we believe in the next one year or 18 months we could see some challenge in terms of our fixed wireless capacities.
” As per the Airtel chief executive, the unit economics are now comparable between both FTTH and FWA, and the telco has worked with vendors and chipset makers to “dramatically bring down the cost of the fixed wireless access- CPE”. Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson , in its June 2024 edition of Mobility Report, had said that higher volumes of 5G FWA in large, high-growth countries, such as India, have the potential to drive economies of scale for the overall 5G FWA ecosystem, resulting in affordable CPE that will have “a positive impact across low-income markets”. By Ashutosh Kumar , ETTelecom Published On Nov 14, 2024 at 03:41 PM IST Telegram Facebook Copy Link Be the first one to comment.
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