- Jio dominates the booming 5G fixed wireless access space in India
- Starlink, Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio-SES are likely to launch satcom services by the end of the year
- Job cuts by the likes of Oracle are impacting the country
2025 is shaping up as a significant year for the Indian telecom industry, with the maturing 5G ecosystem, the much-anticipated launch of satcom services soon and the draft National Telecom Policy 2025 that can potentially provide the much-needed boost to the domestic manufacturing of telecom gear.
Satcom developments
Despite the massive push to 5G by Jio, the Indian telecom industry is finally moving closer to the launch of satellite-based communication services. The Government resolved the bottleneck of whether or not to conduct an auction to allocate spectrum to satellite companies. While the telcos were in favor of an auction, the global satcom players were keen for administrative allocation of the spectrum. It was finally decided in favor of spectrum allocation without auction, paving the way for satellite services.
The indications are that India is likely to witness the launch of satcom services by the end of the year. Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink has acquired all the required approvals to launch services. In addition, Bharti Airtel’s Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio-SES also have the required approvals and are believed to be ready to launch services by the end of the year. Amazon’s Project Kuiper is also likely to acquire approvals soon to offer commercial services.
Airtel has a stake in Eutelsat OneWeb, which has also got the required approvals to commercially launch services in the country. OneWeb has also received approval to set up and operate two gateways in the states of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, Jio has partnered with Luxembourg-based SES to offer satellite-based services to its customers in the country. SES is also awaiting final security approvals and is targeting to launch services by the end of the year.
Starlink has also collaborated with India’s top two service providers, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, to retail its product and services. Airtel and SpaceX will explore options to sell Starlink gear in Airtel’s retail stores and also to sell Starlink services to Airtel’s business customers. On the other hand, Jio will also offer Starlink gear at its retail outlets and support customer service, installation and activation.
The presence of several major domestic as well as international players is likely to lead to hypercompetition in this space.
India’s maturing 5G ecosystem
India’s 5G space heated up with the launch of Vodafone Idea’s 5G services earlier this year. While Airtel and Jio launched 5G services way back in 2022, India’s third-largest service provider, Vodafone Idea, was able to introduce 5G only earlier this year because of its financial struggles. State-owned BSNL is also likely to introduce 5G services soon.
While the total number of 5G subscribers is not clear, Indian telcos have deployed 486,070 5G base stations by the end of June 2025. 5G data traffic is expected to surpass 4G data traffic by Q1 2026, according to Nokia MBiT report 2025.
Jio is offering 5G standalone (5G SA) technology, and Airtel has opted for 5G non-standalone (5G NSA) technology to provide 5G services. Meanwhile, Jio claims to have over 200 million 5G subscribers and 7.4 million fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers at the end of June 2025.
The most compelling use case of 5G in India is fixed wireless access (FWA). While both Airtel and Jio launched 5G FWA services in 2023, Jio has gained an edge in this market, and claimed to have over 200 million 5G subscribers and 7.4 million FWA subscribers at the end of June 2025.
Overall, India had a total of 7.85 million 5G FWA subscribers at the end of June 2025, with the majority of them on Jio’s network. According to Counterpoint Research, the country will likely have 10 million FWA subscribers by the end of 2025. India is a mobile-first country and the lack of adequate wireline network infrastructure has set the base for high demand for FWA services in the country.
Growing job cuts
Even as the satcom segment and 5G ecosystem continue to grow, the industry finds itself grappling with layoffs. The news of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS )'s decision to lay off 12,000 or 2% of its workforce earlier was followed by reports of job cuts in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure teams in the US and India.
As per some news reports, Oracle has let go of around 10% of its Indian workforce and one of the reasons might be because of the U.S. Government’s anti-offshoring stance.
Several global technology companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, among others, have let go of thousands of employees this year as the tech industry starts to feel the impact of AI. Tech giants have started to cut jobs to offset the cost of building AI infrastructure. At the same time, Oracle, like other technology firms, continues to hire for its growing AI business.
Incentive for domestic manufacturers?
As per the draft National Telecom Policy (NTP), 2025, released earlier this month, the government is finally looking to address the longstanding demand of the domestic manufacturers to offer incentives to the service providers to use indigenously designed and produced telecom gear.
If this proposal goes through, it will benefit the local telecom gear manufacturers, including Tejas, STL and HFCL, among others. However, the draft proposals do not share the kind of incentives that can be given to the service providers.
Besides aiming to provide meaningful connectivity to everyone, the policy is targeting to double the telecom industry’s GDP contribution by 2030, create one million new jobs, and achieve an annual investment of $11.39 billion (INR1000 billion). It also intends a twofold increase in telecom exports, startups and research investments. This is in keeping with the overall Atmanirbhar (self-reliance) policy of the government to bring down dependence on imports.
The Indian telecom industry grew by 12-14% to $36.46-$37.60 billion (INR3200-3300 billion) in 2024-25, according to ICRA. The government's support to the domestic industry is crucial because over the next four to five years, the industry is likely to spend $34.18 billion (INR3000 billion) on expanding its networks.
As of now, the industry imports most of the telecom gear. The government is keen to change this and the draft NTP 2025 is a step in this direction.