• India’s two main telcos, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have built nationwide 5G networks
• As well as marketing 5G mobile packages, they have both been offering 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband services
• Jio is currently dominating India’s 5G FWA sector with a near 85% market share, according to the latest market stats from India’s telecom regulator
• It’s also still the country’s biggest telco overall, with a mobile market share of 40.46%

India ended January with just over 5.71 million 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband service subscribers, the vast majority of which have signed up with the country’s largest telco Reliance Jio, according to the latest national statistics report from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). 

According to the telecom watchdog, Jio ended January with 4.84 million 5G FWA users, giving it a market share of 84.7%, while its main rival in India’s communications services sector, Bharti Airtel, had just over 872,000 5G FWA users, for a market share of 15.3%.  

FWA is set to play an important role in India, a ‘mobile-first’ nation that has little in the way of fixed line access network infrastructure to serve its 1.4 billion-plus population – at the end of January there were only 41.1 million fixed access broadband users (fibre, DSL, cable) across the whole country. 

While the major operators have been investing in fibre access networks where it makes sense, the main network investments have gone into mobile broadband networks (4G and 5G). Jio and Airtel have spent tens of billions of dollars rolling out their extensive 5G networks over the past few years and at the end of February this year, there were 469,000 5G base stations deployed across the country – see Why India is a remarkable 5G success story.

Both Jio and Airtel launched 5G FWA services in late 2023 (JioAirFiber and Airtel Xstream AirFiber, respectively), but it is Jio’s service that has proved to be the stronger attraction for users, at least so far. And the service uptake is expected to continue, with Counterpoint Research predicting there will be 10 million 5G FWA users in India by the end of 2025 (by which time Vodafone Idea will have also joined the fray) and more than 30 million by 2027 – see India heading for FWA top spot by 2027.

Jio, of course, has long dominated India’s telecom services sector and continues to be the overall mobile connectivity market leader. According to the new TRAI market statistics report, Jio ended January with 465.82 million wireless connections (including FWA), giving it a market share of 40.46%, while Bharti Airtel had 386.96 million (including FWA) for a market share of 33.61%. Vodafone Idea, which recently launched its initial 5G services and is now 49% owned by the state following its most recent debt-for-equity swap, ended January with 205.92 million wireless connections to give it a market share of 17.89%, while state-owned BSNL had 91.58 million and a market share of 7.95%. 

The other state-owned operator, MTNL (which operates only in New Delhi and Mumbai), had just 1 million connections at the end of January, giving it a market share of not quite 0.1%, and its customer numbers are dwindling by the month – it is surely only a matter of time before that company is put out of its misery and merged with BSNL which, after years of neglect, has finally been getting some financial support from the federal coffers to build out its 4G network and make 5G plans. 

In total, TRAI recorded 1151.29 million wireless connections in India at the end of January, up by almost 629,000 from the end of 2024. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV