Over the next three years, Telcos may see a 10% increase in Arpu.

“The majority of customers in the Indian telecom industry are prepaid (90 percent or more); postpaid customers are growing steadily and this is a long-term trend,” they stated.

Using value-added services like international roaming and bundled entertainment options, all three private telcos have continued to concentrate on moving consumers to higher Arpu postpaid services.

The 2G user base is predicted to become insignificant during the next 5–6 years as a result of telcos’ migration of 2G subscribers to 4G over the previous 7–8 years.

According to analyst estimates, India has around 250 million 2G customers with 23% in Airtel’s subscriber base and 40% in Vodafone Idea’s. The remaining are with state-owned BSNL.

The monetization of 5G technology, which has so far been made available to customers at a minimally increased cost, will provide another growth lever. Although attempts to charge for 5G packs were made in response to the July 2024 tariff hikes, experts predicted that the FWA offerings would be the primary source of 5G revenue.

A new Nokia estimate claims that the number of 5G subscribers in the nation more than doubled from 131 million a year ago to 290 million by the end of 2024. 170 million of the 290 million are connected to Jio’s 5G network, with the remaining number using Airtel’s. It is anticipated that the industry would gain 120 million 5G users in the future, with Vodafone Idea commencing its commercial 5G services in March.

Airtel and Jio are both working to promote their FWA offerings, which should boost the home broadband connectivity market. FWA, which uses 5G airwaves to deliver connection in buildings, can assist reach places where fiber penetration lags, analysts noted, while telecoms continue to increase their FTTH (fibre to the house) pie in areas where fiber penetration is enough.

“Reliance Jio’s 5G FWA subscribers at 4.5 million are multiplying and in the latest quarter accounted for 85% of home additions. Also encouragingly 70% of new 5G FWA subscribers are coming from beyond urban India,” CLSA said in a recent report.

With 17 million homes—nearly twice as many as Airtel’s 9.2 million—Jio currently dominates the home broadband market. Together, the two make up around 60% of India’s residential broadband users.

Approximately 900 million 4G and 5G users, or 80% of India’s 1,143 million total mobile customers, have mobile broadband. Nonetheless, analysts noted that with 46 million houses, including 5G FWA homes, home broadband penetration is still 15% of the total of over 300 million households, offering enormous growth potential.

The analysts at CLSA continued, “We think the best is ahead for RJio’s and Bharti’s homes business opportunity, where growth is now accelerating driven by fast-paced adoption of 5G FWA alongside even changing content consumption preference of households.”