Airtel Prioritises Home Broadband Growth Over Smart Home Adjacent Services

Bharti Airtel shifts focus away from niche home security services to prioritise growth in India’s high-potential broadband market.

Highlights

  • Airtel to slow investment in smart home adjacencies like surveillance and security.
  • Home surveillance services onboarded around 500,000 customers but remained low-ARPU.
  • Company to prioritise expansion in India's home broadband sector.

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Airtel Prioritises Home Broadband Growth Over Smart Home Adjacent Services
Bharti Airtel has decided to slow down its foray into smart home adjacencies, such as home surveillance and security, as it sharpens its focus on scaling its core home broadband business. Speaking during the Q4 FY2025 earnings call, Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, said the company's earlier efforts in home security, including advanced camera systems bundled with broadband, had met with only modest success.

Also Check out in Slides: Airtel Xsafe Cameras: Features and Price




Airtel Xsafe

Airtel had launched the home surveillance offering (Airtel Xsafe) two years ago, featuring state-of-the-art cameras with 360-degree swivel, cloud storage, motion tracking, and smartphone alerts. The initiative managed to onboard around half a million customers, who have proved to be highly sticky. However, the service remained a niche, low-ARPU segment that demanded significant internal resources.

Also Read: Airtel and Google Partner to Offer Google One Subscription to Postpaid and Wi-Fi Users

Niche Market with High Effort and Low Returns

"We have seen some modest success, and one of the things that we found was that it was a very niche business. While the people who we did onboard, which was potentially about half a million customers, were very sticky customers, but the fact is that it was very low ARPU and a huge amount of effort that was taken within the company. So, we have decided to actually go a little slow on that side of the adjacencies and the reason we are going a little slow is that at this point in time, our single minded dedicated focus is to capture a disproportionate share of home broadband. I believe there will be enough time as India evolves, as incomes rise, for us to get into more and more services and adjacencies around that," Vittal said.

Strategic focus on Home Broadband

He added that Airtel's current strategy is to single-mindedly pursue a larger share of India's home broadband market. The company believes the broader market for smart home services will evolve over time, in line with rising income levels and digital adoption.

Global Trends Support Airtel's Approach

Globally as well, adjacencies like home security remain a small fraction of overall home broadband spend. "Even globally, if you look at most of these adjacencies, there is a tiny fraction of the overall home broadband spend. So, this is an area that we are tracking very closely. We do not want to miss the bus. Equally, we do not want to fragment the team for chasing something that is not materially impacting for the company," Vittal noted.

Also Read: Airtel IPTV: First Look at XstreamTV 4K STB and Initial Impressions From an End User

Airtel has also recently launched IPTV services, which the company believes will further enhance customer experience, drive convergence, and reduce capex on set-top boxes.

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In Q4FY25 Series:  

Solarisation of Sites: Airtel Solarises Over 30,000 Network Sites in Major ESG Milestone

Airtel FWA: Airtel 5G FWA Available in Over 2,500 Indian Cities; Prioritises Fiber for Long-Term Broadband Growth

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Passionately following the Indian #Telecom Industry for over a decade from Business, Consumer and a Technical perspective. My primary focus area is Consumer & Digital Experience.

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