FWA subscriptions are growing in India and the US

FWA is a way of delivering high-speed internet to homes or enterprises over a wireless connection rather than through a cable line or fibre. The use of 5G represents an improvement in performance over 4G and other wireless technologies. The use of 5G has brought FWA’s network speeds closer to those offered by fixed infrastructure.

Our new research note, “The success of 5G-based fixed wireless access“, explains how FWA works and its growth in the market. It focuses on India and the US, the two countries that have the most significant FWA deployments. They also happen to be two of the world’s largest mobile markets.

The note also looks at how FWA works, particularly the architecture of 5G standalone (5G SA), which means FWA and mobile can coexist in the same infrastructure. However, the potential for capacity constraints – which may set a limit on FWA’s growth ambitions – requires managed subscriber growth.

The ideal spectrum for FWA is the mid-band range, such as 3.5-4.2 GHz, or C-band, which offers a combination of speed and propagation range.

Bands like 26 GHz and 28 GHz can offer higher speeds but require a denser deployment and line-of-sight connection, making them more suited to serving large apartment blocks in urban areas.

Mobile network operator T-Mobile is the leading provider of 5G-based FWA in the US. The company provides the service via its 5G SA infrastructure, primarily using 2.5 GHz TDDTDD, or Time Division Duplex, is a techniq… spectrum. It said it had 8.5 million subscribers to its Home Internet service at the end of December 2025.

In India, however, Reliance Jio offers its 5G-FWA service using 3.3 GHz frequencies on its 5G SA network. The company said it had a total of 25.3 million fixed broadband subscribers (end-December 2025), a figure that includes fibre, FWA and its own unlicensed band radio (UBR) technology.

Although in some countries FWA remains a niche offering, in others, such as India and the US, it is a disruptive force. Find out more in “The success of 5G-based fixed wireless access,” which is now available to PolicyTracker Spectrum Research Service subscribers.