Just over a year after its launch, fixed wireless access (FWA) homes — powered by 5G — are consuming data at unprecedented levels. According to telecommunications companies (telcos), who have been taken by surprise, the average data consumption per subscriber home on FWA has reached a staggering 500 to 600 gigabytes (GB) per month, far surpassing the consumption of consumer homes on fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband.
Just over a year after its launch, fixed wireless access (FWA) homes — powered by 5G — are consuming data at unprecedented levels. According to telecommunications companies (telcos), who have been taken by surprise, the average data consumption per subscriber home on FWA has reached a staggering 500 to 600 gigabytes (GB) per month, far surpassing the consumption of consumer homes on fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband. Telcos report that FTTH services, which are more stable and offer higher speeds, have seen monthly consumption per subscriber home ranging from 250 to 300 GB. FWA services were first introduced in India by Reliance Jio in September last year, initially in eight cities, and are now available in over 7,700 towns and cities across the country. In what is the fastest rollout of FWA in the world, Jio reached 2.8 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2024-25, more than doubling its subscriber count from the previous quarter. Its target is to reach 100 million homes with FWA and FTTH. Bharti Airtel, which launched its services a few months after Jio in Delhi and Mumbai, has now rolled out FWA in around 1,300 towns and cities across India. It is also upgrading its network from a non-standalone 4G core to a standalone 5G core, which will support FWA speeds. In FWA, the last mile to the home is wireless 5G connected to a tower, making it easier to scale up broadband rollout. In FTTH, the last-mile connection is on fibre, for which telcos require permission for right-of-way to install the fibre underground — a time-consuming process. FWA is already a key element in monetising 5G investments. FWA data usage is a whopping 16 times greater than that of mobile data, which is currently pegged at around 30 GB per subscriber per month. This also translates into four to five times higher average revenue per user compared to a mobile subscriber. Ericsson estimates that 5G-powered FWA will soar in India, reaching 85-100 million homes by 2030. Within a few years, India is expected to overtake the US, which currently has 7 million customers. India has already surpassed 3 million 5G-powered FWA subscribers, and globally, the number of 5G FWA subscribers is expected to increase. Experts suggest that the high data consumption on FWA may be due to the easy availability of broadband in homes in areas previously unconnected by FTTH, creating unsatisfied demand. A top executive from a leading Indian telco offering the service states, “We did not expect that FWA data usage would be far higher than FTTH. We believe this is due to unsatisfied demand for data in areas that were not connected with FTTH, which is slow to roll out. Once FWA was introduced, homes with multiple family members took advantage of the high speeds to stream movies and videos. It might stabilise after the initial phase of the launch as more subscribers and homes are added.” FWA: The data powerhouse of India • Data consumption on fixed wireless access (FWA) is 16 times higher than that of a mobile subscriber and nearly double that of fibre-to-the-home in a month • Average revenue per user of FWA homes is four to five times higher than that of mobile subscribers per month • Estimates suggest that between 85 and 100 million homes in India will be connected with FWA by 2030 • Reliance Jio hit its first 1 million FWA subscribers within 90 months but reached its next million in just 60 days • Bharti Airtel is upgrading its network from non-standalone to standalone 5G to provide better quality FWA service to customers