HFCL said its 5G FWA products are already under trial with domestic and international customers
Indian telecom gear maker HFCL announced the launch of its locally developed 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) consumer premises equipment (CPE) for telecom operators, local press reported.
HFCL said its 5G FWA products are already under trial with domestic and international customers, adding that the global 5G FWA market is expected to reach a value of $68 billion by 2030.
According to the company, its 5G FWA solution works with sub-6 GHz and mmWave spectrum and is suitable for both 5G Standalone (5G SA) and 5G Non-Standalone (5G NSA) networks.
Indian telco Reliance Jio Infocomm’s 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) offering, dubbed JioAirFiber, is already commercially available in 514 cities in 25 states across India, according to recent press reports.
JioAirFiber is available in these states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Maharashtra, Odisha, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Tripura, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The telco had announced the launch of its 5G FWA service in eight cities across the country in September. The service was initially launched in the cities of Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune.
Jio had previously said that its optical fiber infrastructure currently spans over 1.5 million kilometers across India, putting the telco in close proximity to over 200 million premises. However, Jio noted that providing physical last-mile connectivity often ends up taking a lot of time in most parts of the country, leaving millions of potential customers without home broadband, due to the complexities and delays involved in extending fiber to their premises.
Jio is offering FWA plans under two categories – AirFiber, and AirFiber Max, with prices starting from INR 599 ($7.2) and with speeds of 30 Mbps.
Reliance Jio Infocomm previously said it has created a dedicated 5G network slice for the provision of its 5G fixed wireless access solution. The Indian telco aims to reach 100 million connected premises in India with its FWA offering.
Rival telco Bharti Airtel previously 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 built-in Wi-Fi 6 technology that will offer wide indoor coverage and can simultaneously connect up to 64 devices. Airtel said it plans to launch the service in multiple cities and scale up nationally in phases.
