After rolling out 5G services in eight cities, Bharti Airtel is now looking to leverage the technology to find opportunities in wireless broadband. According to senior company officials, Airtel will also provide 5G-enabled wireless access to rural areas and the traditional way of delivering services via fibre.

Bharti Airtel added more than 300,000 new customers in the home broadband segment per quarter. Rival Reliance Jio also said wireless 5G is repeating 4G-like success, especially in home broadband. The company even launched Jio Air Fibre, a Wi-Fi device that provides fibre-like speeds to consumers using 5G networks.

“As fixed wired connections and Wi-Fi hotspots are slow in India, 5G-enabled fixed wireless access (FWA) will have significant advantages such as faster time-to-market, lower costs, no vendor lock-in, over-use of over-the-air upgrades, it complies with global standards and is easy to configure for existing infrastructure,” KPMG said in its recent report.

According to the report, with FWA, CSPs will have a wider network in the mmWave or 26 GHz band to provide connectivity in areas where fixed broadband connectivity is not feasible.

Airtel has announced 5G rollouts in eight cities so far but has yet to provide details on how consumers will use the services. Unlike its rival Jio, Airtel has taken a non-standalone approach to its 5G services. Non-standalone methods use 5G technology on top of 4G networks to provide high-speed 5G services.

The company said its reasons for launching 5G on a non-standalone technology are low network deployment costs and a growing ecosystem. However, industry experts believe that as 5G use cases continue to increase, these companies will have to move to a standalone technology model for some time.