Airtel said it is currently offering its 5G service in 3,500 towns and cities at a national level

Indian operator Bharti Airtel expects its 5G service to reach 7,000 cities and nearly 100,000 villages across India by March 2024, local newspaper The Economic Times reported, citing the telco’s CEO Gopal Vittal.

Vittal said that Airtel’s 5G offering currently reaches 3,500 towns and cities at a national level.

The executive highlighted that 5G monetization and resulting ARPU growth will only happen with tariff increases. Currently, both Bharti Airtel and rival operator Reliance Jio Infocomm are offering 5G services for free, according to the report.

However, the executive highlighted that there has been an increase in data consumption following the launch of 5G services last year.

Recent reports revealed that Bharti Airtel is engaged in talks with nearly 50 companies to co-develop enterprise use cases in the 5G field. Airtel expects that the 5G technology will generate more revenue in the business-to-business (B2B) segment compared to the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment in the coming year.

In October 2022, Bharti Airtel initially launched 5G services in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur and Varanasi.

Airtel is currently using equipment from Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to provide 5G services. The Indian operator had secured a total of 19,800 megahertz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 26 GHz bands in a previous auction carried out by the Indian government.

Rival operator Reliance Jio Infocomm recently claimed its 5G footprint reached 2,300 cities and towns across India at the end of Q-1 Jio has already deployed over 60,000 5G sites across the 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz bands.

However, according to the carrier’s website, Reliance Jio Infocomm is currently offering its 5G service in 2,691 cities across 35 states in India.

About a third of wireless data users in India, or 300 million subscribers, are expected to use 5G services by March 2025, according to a recent report by local Crisil Ratings.

Crisil Ratings, which is owned by S&P Global, also estimated that a total of 20-25 million subscribers are already using 5G services in the Asian nation.

The report also stated that subscribers of 5G services will stimulate data consumption as they upgrade to higher data packs for better speeds, which will drive up overall average revenue per user (ARPU) and return metrics for telecommunication companies.