Reliance Jio, India's largest telecom operator in India, added the most 5G FWA (fixed-wireless access) subscribers in March 2026. Jio added 241,675 new 5G FWA users. Airtel, on the other hand, added 148,514 new 5G FWA users during the same time. This took Jio's total 5G FWA user base to 8,584,110 (8.58 million) users while Airtel's total 5G FWA user base reached 3,737,658 (3.73 million) users. Note that Jio and Airtel call their 5G FWA service AirFiber.
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AirFiber is meant to bridge the connectivity gap that exists in the country. The telcos offer it in urban cities as well, where fiber can't reach or be deployed easily. Deploying fiber is actually a hard and expensive thing. There are a lot of permissions involved and to lay the fiber, the telcos also need time.
With AirFiber, however, the telcos can reach more homes without laying fiber everywhere with high-speed broadband services. In India, there are a total of 12.32 million 5G FWA users right now. It is worth noting that Jio is also offering UBR (unclicensed band radio) services in the country, and is the only operator to do so.
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Reliance Jio's UBR base grew by 199,509 users, and reached 4,285,595 (4.28 million) users. So combined, Jio's UBR service and 5G FWA service, both of which is branded under AirFiber, has reached 12.86 million in total. This means that Jio is adding a lot of home users in the AirFiber segment, far more than Airtel.
This is also due to Jio being ahead with deploying 5G SA (standalone). Airtel is now in the process of deploying 5G SA and is also looking to catch up with Jio in this segment. There are no other operators in the secnario, and it will be interesting to see when Vodafone Idea will enter the space.
