Airtel’s Focus is Fiber as First Protocol for Homes over Wireless: CEO

Bharti Airtel saw its homes business growing in Q1 FY25 driven by accelerated adoption of Wi-Fi services which offer both fiber and AirFiber services. The company added 3,50,000 customers during the quarter in its home broadband business and continued to expand FWA (Fixed-Wireless Access) services throughout India. The FWA services are now available in 1300 cities.

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“We now have a single pricing across fixed wireless access and fiber,” Airtel’s CEO, Gopal Vittal, said during the investors’ call for results of Q1 FY25. This means that Wi-Fi will be the base service a user will purchase. Depending on the location, Airtel will offer the customer either fiber or AirFiber services. However, in areas where both are available, fiber services will be prioritised by the company.

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“The focus on homes for us is really fiber as a first protocol because the experience that you are able to deliver on fiber even a dedicated network both on the down as well as the uplink is always going to be better than any wireless technology,” said Vittal.

Airtel believes that the bulk of the market for their homes business is in 1000 cities across the country. It is because this is where high-paying customers who can afford broadband plans at scale live. In addition, broadband connection uptake follows the adoption of Smart TVs, which is happening mostly in the larger cities and towns.

“I think the bulk of the market is really focused on the top 1000 cities. We will see that. We do not see as much of a market playing out beyond 1,000 cities. I would say maybe 90% to 95% of it is there,” Gopal added.

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He also explained the reason why FWA won’t be suitable for home broadband services in the long run. “Today the 3.5 GHz has a lot of unutilized spectrum and so we will get a great experience at this stage, but over time that will congest as happens in many other markets, most notably if you look at the US the same situation that is playing out there. As a consequence I think our movement will be to grab the market wherever we can to fix wireless access but then to move them to fiber as soon as we can move them to fiber,” he said.

Gopal also said that broadband pricing in India is quite low in India relative to any other market in the world. Homes business still has plenty of potential to grow in India, believes Airtel. The company looks at FWA as a complementary service to fiber. There are about 20-25 million high-value homes that are still unconnected, and this is an opportunity for Airtel to add in high-paying customers.

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“We will roll out one and a half million home passes every quarter so there is a staggering case of rollout of fiber home passes but the time taken to do that can be accelerated dramatically if you actually have a fixed wireless access option so that is the only point. Because remember in broadband once you get into the homes unless you make a mistake or unless your experience is poor the churn tends to be low,” concluded Vittal on the topic.

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