Reliance Jio eyes 100 mn homes through its 5G fixed wireless access

TIL Desk/Business/Mumbai/ Reliance Jio’s aggressive target to reach 100 million households through the launch of the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) could make it one of the world’s largest players in this space. But this also marks a change from its earlier strategy of offering fibre-to-the home (FTTH) broadband to households.

Despite its best efforts, in two years Jio has been able to connect only 7 million households with FTTH, as permission for right of way for the last mile became a major impediment and the process of laying ducts for the roll-out was slow and cumbersome.

The last mile FTTH will now be replaced by 5G wireless access, making it far quicker to scale up the roll-out. It is also in sync with what consumers want from 5G globally. A survey of smartphone users in 10 countries, including India, China, the US and the UK, by GSMA Intelligence last year stated that 42 per cent found the FWA service the most appealing.

The 100-million household target set by Reliance Jio is an ambitious one, since it accounts for a third of the 300 million households in the country with TV (paid and free). The number also corresponds to the entire universe of pay TV subscribers in the country (just over 100 million). Of course, there are 100 million households who do not even have a TV.