Jio's 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services crossed 5.6 million subscribers with an 85 percent market share in the segment at the end of FY25. The telco, which claims to be the world's largest data company, added 1.2 million AirFiber subscribers in the quarter, with almost half of the FWA connections coming from tier three, tier four cities, and rural areas.
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Jio 5G Subscribers and ARPU
"Jio is in a very strong performance - customer additions, 5G subscribers, the ARPU going up and we did not lose customers, or we did not lose the intensity of data consumption too," said V Srikanth, CFO of Reliance Industries Limited, adding that "Jio platforms up 17 percent on the back of, of course, the leadership in technology, the number of customers added, the ARPU increase, and now we are the world's largest data company and have 191 million 5G subscribers and ARPU at Rs 206 plus at 13.5 percent."
Jio Total Subscriber Base
"The total subscriber base [is] at 488.2 million, so that is a net addition of 6.1 million for the quarter. So the little bit of impact that we saw a couple of quarters ago when tariffs were raised, well and truly back, is behind us and we are now adding subscribers. We are seeing good traction on the ground and also seeing very good consumption trends on the ground," said Anshuman Thakur, Head of Strategy at Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited during the Q4FY25 earnings presentation.
Data Traffic on Jio Network
Data traffic on the Jio network increased 19.5 percent year-on-year to around 49 Exabytes in Q4FY25, with a growing 5G subscriber mix and accelerated home connects driving industry-leading traffic growth, while the RIL presentation said, "Jio's deep tech capabilities are driving superior performance."
Jio 5G Experience Backed by Ookla Data
"Our success in the 5G deployment and now 5G consumption and customers' uptake of 5G is very clearly visible on the ground. This map from Ookla shows again we have pretty much pan India 5G coverage now. We cover most of our customers and we have been able to transition 191 million users to 5G," Anshuman Thakur said.
5G Data Traffic
5G now accounts for around 45 percent of total wireless traffic. "5G traffic as a percentage of total traffic has been growing, so we are now at 45 percent of total wireless traffic is on 5G, and this continues to grow and data consumption is continuing to grow, and we are seeing the per capita consumption for consumers when on 5G network is significantly higher," Anshuman Thakur said.
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5G Monetisation Not Started
"People are finding the usage to use more data, and we believe that is sticky kind of usage and that will give us the ability to monetise that more as we go forward. We have really not started monetising 5G. So effectively, 45 percent of data that people today are consuming is being offered to them free of cost.
"They become eligible to use that data, but after that they are not really paying for it, but they are getting into the habit of consuming content, consuming data, but they are not paying for it but they are getting into the habit of consuming content, consuming data, consuming 5G services, and we believe that is a very big opportunity for us in the same way that LTE was a big opportunity for us in 2016.
"The fact that that differentiated LTE data capacity creation that we had done, which subsequently led to the revenue market share, finally it has to reflect at some point in time. We are seeing a similar trend now beginning to emerge here." Anshuman Thakur explained.
Jio 5G Delivering Experience
Jio says at these scales, the company is able to deliver a 224 Mbps 5G download experience. "The overall download experience across all the tests that we do and then external agencies do, they have all been very positive. The customer user experience has been extremely positive on the 5G network. Despite the growth in traffic, we have been holding up quite well," Anshuman Thakur said, highlighting the Mahakumbh case study as an example.
Mahakumbh Case Study
"This was over 660 million devotees gathering within 40 square kilometres in 45 days. And the way our network held up–we did put in a lot of effort to make sure that the network held up during those 45 days in the Mahakumbh. It was the densest data consumption, population conversion that anybody had ever seen globally. We were working with our vendors, with our partners, and they were tracking the data usage as well, and it was mind-boggling for all of them. Nobody anywhere in the globe had ever seen something like this. There were limited access zones, there were jammers put all across, but we still had to make sure that people were able to consume as much data that they wanted and they were online all the time.
"A big difference we saw here, the uplink traffic used to be quite high. So a lot of people were uploading videos and pictures and normally that is not the way you plan your network. You would expect downlink to be much more. And we had to therefore adjust some of this there on the ground, on the site.
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Data Usage During Mahakumbh
"We were able to, with our spectrum that we have, but the government had given us some spectrum during that period to just provide services to the customers, we were able to test the elasticity of that network, really, in that small period or small space where we saw 2.2 million GB of data traffic, the bulk of the usage of 5G, so the whole area was enabled with 5G. We were giving download and upload speeds of 200 Mbps plus, 141 million voice minutes. So this has kind of become a case study for network companies, telecom companies, service providers, vendors, everybody is looking at this as a case study where these kind of global records were set in a short period of time," the Head of Strategy at RJIL explained.
At the world's largest gathering, Mahakumbh, Jio claimed that its elastic network and meticulously planned HetNet delivered the best network experience at unprecedented density.
"The elasticity of this network is fairly high. That gives us confidence that with the network that we have already created, we can serve hundreds of millions more customers on this network," Anshuman Thakur said.
Jio's FWA Stack
Jio has developed and operationalised what it calls the world's first point-to-multipoint wireless solution for fixed broadband. Typically in this model, multiple homes are serviced or connected with a single outdoor unit (ODU), which Jio claims lowers the cost of deployment. This means Jio uses a single ODU to connect multiple homes for its 5G-based FWA service.
Anshuman Thakur also spoke about Jio's FWA Stack which powers the AirFiber offering of the telco. "The fixed wireless stack, now this is something that we have been deploying extensively on the ground, as you are aware about this. The recent TIA report said that we have 85 percent market share in this."
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Jio FWA 5G/UBR
"In this particular product, which has gone live in the market over the last few months, we have been deploying a fair bit of fixed wireless, both on our 5G spectrum but also on the UBR (Unlicensed Band Radio). We have developed or now deployed, not only developed, so it is in commercial use, the first point-to-point wireless solution for fixed wireless," said Anshuman Thakur.
An unlicensed band radio (UBR) equipment operates in frequency ranges that do not require a license from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for usage. In India, the 2.5GHz, 5GHz, and some lower bands have been delicensed for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other applications.
Reducing the Cost of Deployment
"So this is not point-to-point. In the way the network is configured, we can use single radiating equipment to serve multiple customers. We have been able to, through that, reduce the cost of deployment. So the cost that we incur to connect every new home is incrementally much lesser than what you would hear about companies elsewhere which are doing such a thing," he said.
"The spectral efficiency is higher. And we have been able to create the full mapping of the country where our customers are. This is a very important functionality. So when we get a customer inquiry or a customer request to connect a customer, we know exactly which way, which technology to use, which site to radiate from for a particular customer. If the fiber is available, of course we connect the customer with fiber, but otherwise with our 5G spectrum, in some cases UBR, we know exactly, it is pretty 3 meter x 3 meter map, where we know exactly what kind of throughput different technologies will provide to customers," Thakur said.
Jio said it is using a Digital Twin-based real-time feasibility check for faster deployment of FWA across the 5G and UBR spectrum.
In-House Technology Design
"And all of this is being done completely end to end value chain is in our control, be it the devices, the technology, deployment, all of that has been done in-house. So we are not taking this technology or taking any equipment. Now, pretty much all the equipment is being manufactured, produced by ourselves within the ecosystem. They have been designed ourselves and they have been produced in India, all of this is made in India, and is being done completely within the Jio ecosystem," Thakur said.
RIL in its presentation said, after successful India scale-up, Jio FWA stack sees global interest.
On Track To Connect 100 Million Homes
As a result, "we are feeling confident to be able to connect 100 million homes, which is a target that we have set for ourselves," Thakur said. However, he did not give a timeline for achieving 100 million connected homes, but said that it will be done with a combination of JioFiber (FTTH service) and JioAirFiber (5G-based FWA service).
In the last six months, Jio said it has 90 percent of industry net additions on AirFiber, five times higher than the next nearest competitor.
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Synchronous Speeds on AirFiber
"We call it AirFiber because, unlike traditional definition of fixed wireless, in our case, we are giving completely synchronous uplink, downlink, and throughputs because of the way the network is configured, because of the spectrum that we are using. So when we say 1 Gbps at home for home broadband using either our 5G spectrum or the UBR, that is uplink and downlink of 1 Gbps. That is what we have enabled, which is reflecting in the ramp-up of AirFiber subscribers. In the recent months, we have also transitioned from the 5G spectrum to UBR." Thakur explained about AirFiber capacity.
UBR is Commercially Live
According to Thakur, UBR is now commercially live. "Even in situations where Jio do not have direct line of sight which has been a bug challenge just about every operator globally. We are able to do without nano site connections as well by reflecting the radio from other surfaces. This is unique. This is proprietary and we have been doing this successfully and commercially, so it is all commercially deployed on the ground."
Deployment of Jio Private 5G
Thakur also confirmed that Jio deployed private 5G for enterprise customers by creating a dedicated slice for use cases for enterprises, for whatever the end use case may be, including for fixed wireless. "This is the other deployment which is now being done successfully, commercially on the ground, which is our private 5G instances for enterprise customers," Thakur said.
"We have a network slice that we use to provide that service. And then create a secure tunnel on our own private 5G core," he said, adding, as spoken about in the past, Jio's 5G core—the whole network core, 4G and 5G—is completely deployed by the company.
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Private 5G Use Cases
"It is our own proprietary core. And we are able to create private instance of that for our enterprise customers. And this has got many use cases. We already have deployed in some of the industrial situations, industrial premises, including in Jamnagar, and use cases around robotic automation, video surveillance, [and] enhanced security."
In its presentation, RIL said that Jio's 5G SA network is powering Industry 5.0 with network slicing.
RJIL Key Metrics
Jio reported an average data consumption of 33.6GB per user per month, with total data consumption of 4,894 crore GBs, 1,661 crore minutes per day, and 1,027 minutes per month of per capita voice consumption. Overall, data and voice traffic in Q4FY25 grew by 19.5 percent and 3.8 percent year-on-year, respectively.
For the quarter, RJIL reported Rs 30,018 crore in revenues and Rs 16,188 crore in EBITDA. For Jio Platforms Limited, Q4 FY25 revenues from operations stood at Rs 33,986 crore, EBITDA at Rs 17,016 crore, and profit after tax increased to Rs 7,023 crore, with a growth of 25.8 percent YoY.
"We are seeing good traction with digital revenues as well, digital service revenues on the back of Cloud services which are now launched for enterprises. We have won some good competitive tenders for government clients and then a bunch of services around IoT that we provide and also the content bundling that we do for services provided to our home customers," Thakur said.
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