Reliance Jio introduced a fixed wireless access (FWA) service in eight cities in India, claiming the technology using its 5G network overcomes last-mile connectivity constraints, with the potential to connect every home and small business.

Chairman Akash Ambani stated: “We are expanding our addressable market to rapidly cover every home in our country with similar quality of service.”

He added its Fibre To The Home (FTTH) service JioFiber already serves more than 10 million customers. “But there are still millions of homes and small businesses to be connected at a rapid pace.”

The new AirFiber service delivers an integrated service covering high-speed broadband, home entertainment and smart home services. The first batch of cities includes Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata.

The entry-level plan is INR599 ($7.22) per month, with a maximum speed of 30Mb/s, while the top-tier package is INR3,999 a month, offering a speed of 1Gb/s. Both include access to 550 digital TV channels and 14 OTT apps, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Jio, the largest mobile player in the country by connections, said its optical-fibre infrastructure spans more than 1.5 million kilometres, with its FTTH service passing some 200 million premises nationwide.

Rival Bharti Airtel launched a similar FWA service, Xstream AirFiber, in July in Mumbai and Delhi.