Reliance Jio has emerged as the fastest-growing provider of 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services worldwide, driven by its JioAir Fiber offering in India. The company saw its subscriber base nearly triple in the second quarter of the fiscal year, marking a significant leap in its home broadband market expansion.
“We continue to make good progress on the home side. We are the fastest-growing Fixed Wireless Access provider globally with our JioAir Fiber offering. We reached 2.8 million subscribers… That’s almost doubling our subscriber base with AirFiber this quarter, and the run rate has ramped significantly,” said Anshuman Thakur, Senior Vice President of Jio Platforms, during the company’s post-earnings presentation on October 14.
Kiran Thomas, President of Jio Platforms, highlighted the company’s ambitious plans during the Q2 briefing call, revealing the next target of adding nearly a million homes monthly, thanks to Jio’s 5G-based JioAir Fiber and wired JioFiber services. “5G is powering our home broadband service and has accelerated our acquisition rate for homes. We were at 0.6 million every quarter, but in the September quarter, we tripled growth in terms of homes, mainly using JioAir Fiber,” Thomas stated. “We see that there’s still much more optimization and scale-up that we can do,” he added.
During the earnings call, Thakur also noted that Jio experienced SIM consolidation in Q2, though at a lesser intensity than when tariffs were raised, and expected this trend to subside. “We continue to build market leadership with 5G service, with 148 million subscribers switching to 5G, contributing 24% of the wireless data tariff. We are happy with the service uptake and the nature of the delivery,” he said.
Jio’s average revenue per user (ARPU) saw a 7.4% rise year-over-year to Rs 195.1, reflecting the impact of tariff hikes and an improved subscriber mix. Thakur attributed the growth to several factors, including customer upgrades and the success of additional services. “ARPU is steadily growing… there is the impact of tariff increases, but customer upgrading and subscribers moving to higher plans as consumption improves also contribute to the increase in APRU,” he explained.
