Airtel to Take a Slow Approach Towards 5G SA

Bharti Airtel, the second-largest telecom operator in India, will be taking a slow approach towards 5G SA (standalone architecture). The company’s staggered approach will be there because it doesn’t see an immediate need to invest in the SA, said S&P Global Ratings. Much recently, the research agency had upgraded its rating for Bharti Airtel. While 5G SA is seen as a crucial medium for the telcos to enable network slicing, and Reduced Capability (RedCap) IoT, Airtel doesn’t see an immediate need to do this.

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Talking to ET Telecom on Thursday during an online roundtable, Ker Liang Chan, the associate director for corporate ratings at S&P Global Ratings said, “..at least from Bharti Airtel’s point of view, we think that the Capex for standalone, which will arguably be more costly, should be more gradual and phased due to the lack of an imminent need to deploy huge capital there.”

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Airtel’s going to operate dual-mode 5G for the next few years. This was confirmed by the telco’s CEO, Gopal Vittal at the earnings call for Q2 FY26. The ratings of Airtel was recently upgraded to BBB from BBB-. The 5G SA will be first launched by the telco for the FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) customers. The company has already launched the 5G SA in 13 circles for FWA customers, in the coming years, will also launch it for smartphone users.

Bharti Airtle’s CEO has also expressed his disappointment on the results that 5G has given to the telecom industry in terms of monetisation. The telcos haven’t managed to leverage 5G to make money. The only major use case of 5G is FWA (fixed wireless access) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) at this point of time.