Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) services have been present in India for several years. AirFiber or the FWA (fixed wireless access) services are fast becoming mainstream as 5G expands. Reliance Jio has plans to soon add 1 million AirFiber/FWA customers every month. This would help India in becoming a super well connected nation. However, in 2025, if AirFiber is now available in your area or soon going to arrive, should you pick that over Fiber? Here's our take on the question.
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Fiber or AirFiber?
The first thing to ask yourself is what are your needs? Do you just want connectivity for super fast downloads, or are you a creator and need high-speed uploads as well? If you need both high upload and download, then fiber is the best option. AirFiber connections offer fast download, but not a uniform upload speed.
When it comes to reliability, fiber will always have an upper hand over the AirFiber. This is because the former isn't wireless technology which can be disturbed very easily. FWA services are an extension of fiber services. If fiber is not present in an area, and it is hard to deploy services via fiber due to terrain issues or any other problem, then AirFiber is the route to go. However, in almost every circumstance, if fiber is present in your area, then give that the first preference.
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Bharti Airtel has said it that it wants to eventually move its AirFiber users to fiber services. This just goes to show that fiber is not only more cost effective for the telcos, but also more reliable for the customers to get high-speed data services. AirFiber or FWA is powered by 5G networks, and hence is wireless technology.
As in the case of Jio, you get 5G SA network while Airtel is fast trying to upgrade to 5G SA as well for providing FWA services.
