Bharti Airtel aims to leverage likely doubling of India’s home broadband market: Analysts

Bharti Airtel is looking to leverage the sharp expected growth in India’s home broadband market and boost revenues amid rising consumer appetite for its 5G-based fixed wireless access (FWA) services, the telecom operator’s top management told analysts in its recent third-quarter earnings call.

“Airtel is looking to accelerate growth in the home broadband market, which it believes could double in size over the medium term,” BNP Paribas, which participated in the Sunil Mittal-led telco’s Q3FY25 earnings call, said in a research note.

IIFL Securities, on its part, said around 80-90 million homes can take up fixed broadband services in the long run from the current 45 million.

Airtel has expanded its FWA services to over 2,000 cities, which is helping it to increase its TAM (total addressable market) for fixed broadband (FBB) services. This is since 5G-based FWA helps cover locations that were fibre dark.

“The company (read: Airtel) expects the (industry-wide) FBB subs base to potentially double to 80-90 million from 45 million now, with increased connectivity. It is also rolling out 1.9 million home
passes per quarter,” ICICI Securities, which also participated in Airtel’s Q3FY25 call, said.

Airtel’s senior management said the telco is trying to catch-up with competition (read: Reliance Jio) by not only improving its FWA footprint, but also sweetening its content/OTT offerings, and expanding the sales channel beyond digital and D2C (direct-to-consumer) by firing up the retail channel.

The home broadband market is dominated by Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and state-run BSNL. As per latest subscriber data collated by Trai, Jio, Airtel and BSNL had 11.48 million, 8.55 million and 4.24 million wired broadband subscribers respectively as of end-November 2024.

For now, Airtel plans to deliver FWA services using its NSA (non-standalone) mode 5G network that rides on existing 4G network infrastructure and airwave resources. This is since the capacity utilisation of its 5G network remains low and far from getting congested.

Airtel’s leadership, though, said that once the company’s 5G network starts seeing some congestion, amid rising adoption of the next-gen broadband service, its FWA users would be migrated to the 5G standalone (SA) mode as the latter can, typically, remove bottlenecks in uplink speeds and maintain a top-quality broadband experience even when a 5G network is congested.

“We are testing the SA (mode) now with a few thousand (FWA) customers, and the telco can just flip a switch to get its FWA users to SA if required,” Airtel’s vice-chairman Gopal Vittal told analysts on the call.

Analysts also expect FWA services to help telcos break the 5G monetisation logjam in the interim and open new revenue streams. This is since the monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) from the 5G-based FWA business is estimated to be at least three-times higher (at Rs 600-700) than 5G mobile ARPUs.

Airtel’s home broadband business reported stronger revenue growth of 19% year-on-year in Q3. It was 17% y-o-y growth in Q2. Subscriber growth in this segment, too, was higher at 27% y-o-y compared with 23% in Q2.

Nuvama Institutional Equities, which also participated in the call, said Airtel’s management intends to focus on “both debt reduction and dividend distribution” amid strong free cash flow (FCF) generation.

Airtel has generated $3.3 billion of FCF in the last 12 months (excl. spectrum prepayment). “With Bharti having prepaid most of its high-cost spectrum debt, we see an increasing probability of it resuming shareholder payout in the next 12 months,” said Goldman Sachs.