Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) adoption is picking up pace in the country, driven by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio’s aggressive push to expand their home broadband footprint. It is expected to follow global trends and become a key component of telecom operators’ broadband offerings.
As of March 2025, FWA accounted for 14% of the total home broadband subscriber base and has already surpassed fixed wireline (fibre-enabled home broadband) when it comes to net additions, observed analysts.
“The relatively high proportion, within a short period of launch, is on the back of the relative ease of increasing home passes vs fibre, and telcos’ strategy of keeping price plans broadly similar to fixed,” analysts from Axis Capital observed.
Both Jio and Airtel have also benefited from similar pricing strategies for fixed broadband and FWA, which makes the customer indifferent to the mode of access to home broadband.
According to monthly subscriber data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the FWA subscriber base in the country has grown from 5.72 million in January to 7.5 million in April. The regulator started reporting the metric as part of its monthly reports in January this year.
Fixed wired broadband, on the other hand, has seen only marginal growth over the first four months of the year — rising from 41.15 million in January to 41.41 million by the end of April.
Both Airtel and Jio launched their FWA services around 18 months back, and offer plans at comparable rates. However, Jio currently has around 82% of the market share, while Airtel has 18%. In terms of net additions, Jio’s share comes in at 67% and Airtel’s at 33%.
“Jio’s FWA base is well distributed across circles (including Bihar, MP, UP East, etc.) while Bharti’s is more concentrated in metros and Class A circles (Maharashtra, Karnataka, TN, AP, Gujarat),” analysts from IIFL noted.
In fact, Jio already has a growing FWA subscriber footprint in the rural areas, where Airtel is yet to make inroads. In fact, of its 6.14 million FWA user base, 45% or 2.77 million come from the rural market.
“Jio continues to record robust 5G FWA subs additions at 0.57 million in Apr’25 (vs 0.33 million in Mar’25), driven by its aggressive push of JioAirFiber pan-India coverage (JioAirFiber is now available in +5,900 cities/towns),” analysts from JM Financial added.
Another factor working in Jio’s favour is its network architecture. From the outset, Jio opted for a standalone 5G network — built on a dedicated 5G core rather than layered over a 4G core. This, analysts say, enables the telco to push Fixed Wireless Access services more effectively.
“Jio currently dominates the FWA segment with an 82% share, followed by Bharti at 18%. This is on the back of Jio leading in the rollout, leveraging its SA 5G network. Recall that Bharti was initially unenthused with the offering. However, that has since changed,” analysts from Axis Capital said.
