India’s Fixed Broadband Landscape: Airtel Sweeps Opensignal’s November 2026 Report
According to Opensignal’s latest Fixed Broadband Experience Report for November 2026, Bharti Airtel has emerged as India’s premier home internet provider.
Covering data collected between April 1 and June 29, 2026, the report reveals that Airtel has decisively swept all five overall experience awards, establishing a commanding lead over its chief competitors, Jio and BSNL.
Key Findings: Airtel’s Clean Sweep
Airtel claimed every major overall category outright: Reliability, Consistent Quality, Download Speed, Upload Speed, and Video Experience.
Reliability Edge: Airtel scored an impressive 486 points(on a 100-1000 scale) for overall reliability, placing it 63 points ahead of Jio (423 points) and BSNL (419 points).
Speed Dominance: Airtel’s download and upload speeds outpace Jio by roughly 26% to 27%.
While Airtel comfortably leads, BSNL surprised as a strong runner-up on raw throughput, trailing Airtel by a mere 0.5Mbps in download speeds and 0.8Mbps in upload speeds.
FWA Leadership: In the rapidly growing Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) sector, Airtel won all five FWA-specific awards.
It recorded FWA download speeds of 32.4Mbps (6.7Mbps faster than Jio) and upload speeds of 20.7Mbps.
Furthermore, Airtel’s FWA Consistent Quality score hit 66.2%—surpassing Jio’s 55.0% by over 11 percentage points.
Market Overview: Wired vs. Fixed Wireless Access
India remains predominantly a mobile-first internet market, but fixed broadband is expanding rapidly.
Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI’s August 2026 data) indicates a combined fixed broadband subscriber base of roughly 68 million, split between 48.6 million wired subscriptions (growing ~10% year-on-year) and *19.3 million FWA subscriptions.
While wired access retains a 70% market share, FWA serves as the main engine of subscriber growth:
1. Jio’s FWA Dominance: Driven heavily by JioAirFiber, Jio crossed 14 million FWA subscribers by mid-2026.
Jio dominates the 5G FWA and Unlicensed Band Radio (UBR) landscape, running its infrastructure on an advanced 5G standalone core with network slicing.
2. Airtel’s Pivot to Fibre: Although Airtel boasts nearly 14.7 million home customers, the operator has strategically initiated a “pivot to fibre.”
Facing higher churn among low-priced FWA entry tiers and rising chipset expenses, Airtel is prioritising FTTH (Fiber-to-the-Home) deployments, adding a record ~8 million fibre home passes over the past year.
FWA is increasingly reserved for hard-to-reach locations where laying physical fibre is impractical.
3. BSNL’s Steady Presence: BSNL maintains its position as the third-largest wired broadband provider in India, holding roughly 4.56 million wired subscribers at the end of August 2026.
Conclusion
Opensignal’s report underscores a maturing broadband market where consumers expect seamless connectivity for remote work, heavy online learning, and multi-device streaming.
By pairing top-tier raw speeds with superior everyday reliability, Airtel has successfully set a high performance benchmark for Indian home internet service providers.
