5G yet to live up to its promise globally; Airtel rolling out 5G dual mode with SA capability in phases: Gopal Vittal

Bharti Airtel Vice Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal

Bharti Airtel Vice Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal said 5G has not lived up to its global promise, with telecom operators worldwide still struggling to identify new revenue streams beyond faster data speeds.

“One of the pain points in the telecom world across the globe is that 5G has not lived up to its promise. The primary use case of 5G is only speed. It’s just a more efficient way of producing the same gigabyte. While it’s more cost-efficient, it has not led to any monetisation anywhere in the world,” Vittal said during the company’s Q2 FY25 earnings call.

He added that while some operators have experimented with standalone 5G (SA) and network slicing — particularly in markets like the US — these initiatives remain limited in scale and impact.

“There have been some experiments and moves on standalone through slicing in some markets like the US and so on, but it’s still too small and too few and far between to make a meaningful difference to the overall monetisation that was promised,” he said.

Despite these challenges, Airtel is progressively expanding its 5G coverage across India and taking a measured, demand-led approach to deploying standalone 5G — the next-generation network architecture that operates independently of 4G cores.

“We’re now in the process of transitioning our 5G networks towards 5G Advanced by introducing dual NSA plus SA mode and migrating our FWA users to the same. Today, our FWA customers across 13 circles are already experiencing our dual-mode 5G network with SA. For the mobile network, pilots are underway for the 5G dual mode in a couple of circles, and we plan to make it commercial in the coming months as traffic on our 5G network grows,” Vittal said.

He added that over the next five to six years, as network traffic migrates, Airtel will gradually refarm 4G spectrum to standalone 5G, a transition that will happen in phases.

Vittal also noted that the key benefits of 5G standalone — such as lower latency and stronger uplink performance — are primarily relevant for enterprise applications rather than mass consumer use.

“Eventually, we will move fully to standalone, but there’s no rush. We’ll do it where the use cases make sense,” he said.

Airtel’s current 5G rollout is based on non-standalone (NSA) technology, which leverages its existing 4G core network to enable faster and more cost-efficient expansion. The company has already achieved nationwide 5G coverage, spanning over 7,000 towns and 20,000 villages.

On 5G standalone, Vittal said the transition requires minimal capital expenditure as it is largely software-driven.
“All our networks are capable of moving to standalone at the click of a button. It involves a very small amount of spending, primarily for software,” he said.

Vittal said Airtel’s measured strategy has been validated by third-party benchmarks.

“We wouldn’t have done anything differently in our 5G approach,” he said, adding that Airtel’s focus remains on customer experience, not chasing technology for its own sake.

He cited recent OpenSignal reports showing Airtel leading on multiple network experience metrics in India, reaffirming that the company’s approach of balancing quality, cost, and coverage “has paid off.” “The industry is still waiting for a defining 5G use case that drives monetisation. Until then, the priority is to strengthen the network and customer experience,” Vittal said.