Post-rollout of 5G, India is now ranked 47th globally on mobile download speeds, a huge improvement from its 119th position, pre-5G, just over a year back. Full-blown 5G mobile tariffs are still some time away, though, Jio and Airtel have taken early steps at 5G monetisation by recently launching 5G-based fixed wireless access (FWA) services in key markets.
Bharti Airtel has announced that it has acquired 50 million unique 5G customers in India within a year of launching its next-generation services. The company stated that its Airtel 5G Plus services are now available in all districts across the country. Airtel aims to provide 5G coverage in every town and key rural area by September 2023.
With 70-80% of data consumed indoors, the 4G/5G customer experience is contingent to a bricolage of denser base transceiver station (BTS) deployment, inbuilding coverage solutions and sub-1 GHz spectrum. Though India claims to be catching up fast on our 5G lag versus peers on deployment, the acid test will be on building customer experience.
"India accounted for the most net additions during the quarter (+7 million), followed by China (+5 million) and the US (+3 million)," the report said. According to the report, India s mobile subscriber base grew by about 7 million to 1,125 million in the second quarter of 2023. China s mobile subscriber base grew by five million to 1,695 million.