Airtel said its 5G-based Airtel Xstream AirFiber offering is already available for its customers in Delhi and Mumbai
Indian operator Bharti Airtel announced the launch of what it claims to be India’s first fixed wireless access (FWA) offering.
In a release, the company said that its 5G-based Airtel Xstream AirFiber offering is already available for its customers in Delhi and Mumbai.
The operator said that the new service, which will offer internet to consumers in fiber dark areas, will address the last-mile connectivity issue in both rural and urban India where access to fiber infrastructure is a challenge.
Airtel noted that Xstream AirFiber is a plug-and-play device, with in-built Wi-Fi 6 technology that will offer wide indoor coverage and can simultaneously connect up to 64 devices.
Shashwat Sharma, head of Bharti Airtel’s Consumer Business division, said: “India has seen the rapid growth of home broadband but there still remain areas with no access to hi-speed internet at home due to the physical challenges of laying fiber in a country the size of India. While fiber-to-the home will always define the best experience of Wi-Fi at home, AirFiber helps bridge the experience gap for everyone else.”
Airtel said it plans to launch the service in multiple cities and scale up nationally in a phased manner. All Xstream AirFiber devices will be manufactured in India under the “Make in India” program, the company added.
Airtel also highlighted its 5G service is currently available in more than 3,500 towns and villages across India.
The carrier’s CEO, Goppal Vittal, said that Bharti Airtel expects its 5G service to reach 7,000 cities and nearly 100,000 villages across India by March 2024.
In October 2022, Bharti Airtel initially launched 5G services in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur and Varanasi.
Airtel is currently using equipment from Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to provide 5G services. The Indian operator had secured a total of 19,800 megahertz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 26 GHz bands in a previous auction carried out by the Indian government.
Recent reports revealed that Bharti Airtel is engaged in talks with nearly 50 companies to co-develop enterprise use cases in the 5G field. Airtel expects that the 5G technology will generate more revenue in the business-to-business (B2B) segment compared to the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment in the coming year.
Rival operator Reliance Jio Infocomm’s 5G footprint reached 6,258 cities and towns across India, according to the telco’s website. Jio has already deployed over 60,000 5G sites across the 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands.
Meanwhile, Vodafone Idea is in the final stage of negotiations with banks to secure funding, which will be key for the launch of its 5G network infrastructure in the country, according to recent reports.
