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Bharti Airtel intends to switch to Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) on Standalone (SA) 5G by December 2024. On October 30, 2024, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO of Bharti Airtel Limited, stated during the firm's second-quarter earnings web conference that the business is now testing if SA can improve uplink performance for FWA because it works on a static network. The choice to go from NSA to SA 5G for mobile services is contingent upon the strain on spectrum bands, Vittal emphasised. With additional spectrum becoming available, Airtel will be able to devote more bandwidth to 5G and finally make the switch to a completely independent network. It will take three to four years to make this change, though.
According to Vittal, Airtel can employ standalone 5G to offer specific use cases, even if not over the network. For instance, the business currently provides standalone networks for a few enterprise clients. An excellent use case is fixed wireless access. While this theory needs to be tested, we think standalone networks will enhance uplink performance. As mobile traffic increases, SA networks also enable network splitting.
Hybrid 5G Strategy
Vittal said Airtel might take a similar hybrid approach, citing the US as an example, where firms such as T-Mobile run both SA and NSA networks. "It's just software," he informed them. "The baseband units and radios are identical. All you need is a software program to direct particular use cases or regions onto the standalone network and a standalone core.
While SA will be utilised for corporate and FWA services, Airtel will continue to rely on Non-Standalone (NSA) networks for consumer services in the near future. The business will deploy SA for particular use cases or geographies as necessary. Airtel anticipates that all NSA networks will eventually switch to SA, while there isn't a pressing need.
According to Airtel, it has significant mid-band and sub-GHz spectrum, which offers wide coverage and reach and allows NSA mode with the 3.5 GHz band. Airtel will gradually switch its spectrum to SA 5G as mid-band capacity becomes available, 4G traffic decreases, and 5G device adoption rises.
In accordance with Vittal, Airtel improved its infrastructure during the quarter by adding over 9,800 route kilometres of fibre and over 5,000 additional network stations.
Given SIM consolidation after pricing revisions, Airtel lost 2.9 million customers in the mobility segment; nevertheless, this drop was not as large as in the past. In October, there was a net increase in new customers, reversing the trend. According to the CEO, Airtel added 4.2 million smartphone users during the quarter.
With FWA growth helping to expand its 5G coverage, Airtel ended the quarter with 105 million 5G users. Currently, the firm uses a combination of Fixed Wireless Access and FTTH services to provide Airtel Wi-Fi services in more than 2,000 cities.
Bharti Airtel released the Q2 FY25 results.The most notable outcome is the telco's average revenue per user (ARPU), which was Rs 233 and nearly reached the company's short-term target of Rs 250.
Their quarterly revenues of Rs 41,473 crore represented a 12% YoY and a 7.7% QoQ increase. India's business contributed to this with a quarterly revenue of Rs 31,561 crore, which was up 16.9% year over year. Due to the telco's July pricing hike, mobile services revenue increased 18.5% year over year during the quarter. That also had an impact on the ARPU, which increased from Rs 211 to Rs 233 in the prior quarter.