According to Gopal Vittal, managing director, Bharti Airtel, the full-scale impact of the telco’s deployment of fixed wireless access (FWA) services, which has been deployed across 25 cities so far, will start to show in the second quarter (Q2) of the fiscal year 2024-25 (FY25).
Speaking during the company’s recent earnings call, Vittal noted that Airtel’s FWA deployment will happen over standalone architecture (SA), similar to Reliance Jio, unlike its cellular 5G deployment which happened over non-standalone architecture (NSA).
FWA is being seen as the crucial first use case in 5G that will enable telcos like Airtel and Jio to monetise the huge investments made on deployment of the technology, amidst telcos offering unlimited 5G speeds to mobile phone users.
Vittal added that the FWA deployment is taking time on account of the time taken to scale supplies of customer premises equipment (CPE), which is coming from across the world. Furthermore, Airtel is planning to accelerate FWA deployment in locations where its fibre reach is insufficient or non-existent.
