India\u2019s top telecom operators, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have cumulatively added nearly 401 million fifth-generation (5G) subscribers and gained 3 percentage points (ppt) revenue share to 81% in three years of the commercial launch of next-generation networks, according to CLSA. <\/p>\n
This strong growth has come irrespective of network architecture, Jio\u2019s 5G standalone (SA) and Airtel\u2019s 5G non-standalone (NSA), and despite 5G tariffs being 17% more expensive than 4G rates. The rise in 5G subscribers has also been driven by 5G smartphones, whose shipments now account for 91% of the overall smartphone volumes in India, the brokerage said. <\/p>\n
CLSA said, \u201cJio and Bharti combined mobile share will expand by 4ppt to 85% by FY28CL and ARPU by 21-22% to \u20b9258-311, while 5G could still drive upsides to duo\u2019s growth.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the India data subscribers at 951 million have grown by 85 million since the duo did pan-India 5G rollouts, and with India\u2019s 1170 million mobile subscribers (1094 million active), sector data penetration is at 81%,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
CLSA estimates that Jio\u2019s 5G subscribers have reached 234 million, representing 46% of its 506 million total subscribers. Airtel\u2019s 5G subscribers, too, are 46% of its 364 million mobile subscribers. <\/p>\n
Third-ranked Vodafone Idea (Vi), by contrast, launched its commercial 5G networks in the second quarter of the fiscal year 2026, after it signed multi-year $3.6-billion 5G equipment deals with multinational vendors Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung in late 2024. <\/p>\n
\u201cVodafone Idea 5G introductory plan was at \u20b9299, which was ~15% discount to duo, but it has been selectively withdrawing the offer and replacing it with \u20b9349 plan, similar to the duo (Jio and Airtel,\u201d CLSA said of tariffs.<\/p>\n
\u2018Jio cements lead in FWA\u2019<\/p>\n
HSBC, in a separate research note, said that Jio has widened its lead in the home broadband segment, driven by network investments and a combination of FWA and unlicensed band radio (UBR). <\/p>\n
Jio has added 7.7 million home broadband subscribers to date in this calendar year, higher than Airtel\u2019s 3.2 million, with their respective home broadband bases at 23.6 million and 12.4 million, as of October 2025. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe note Jio AirFiber (FWA+UBR) subscriber base surged to 10.2 million, as of October 2025 and stood at 4x Airtel\u2019s 2.5 million subscribers. We are pleasantly surprised by the strong uptick in Jio\u2019s home broadband UBR subscriber base, which had grown to 2.8 million as of October 2025,\u201d HSBC said. <\/p>\n
India\u2019s wired home broadband base is a mere 45 million of over 300 million households. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe duo\u2019s(Jio and Airtel) home broadband has reached combined 35 million subscribers and 5G FWA will add share,\u201d said CLSA.<\/p>\n
HSBC, in turn, added that it remains \u201cconstructive\u201d on the structural growth drivers for Airtel and Jio, and expects the mobile ARPU to rise. \u201cIn home broadband, we expect 5G FWA to be a key catalyst to grow the TAM, in addition to rising fibre home pass,\u201d the brokerage said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s top telecom operators, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have cumulatively added nearly 401 million fifth-generation (5G) subscribers and gained 3 percentage points (ppt) revenue share to 81% in three years of the commercial launch of next-generation networks, according to CLSA. This strong growth has come irrespective of network architecture, Jio\u2019s 5G standalone (SA) and Airtel\u2019s 5G non-standalone (NSA), and despite 5G tariffs being 17% more expensive than 4G rates. The rise in 5G subscribers has also been driven by 5G smartphones, whose shipments now account for 91% of the overall smartphone volumes in India, the brokerage said. CLSA said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}