India’s 5G Reality Check: Why Jio’s Standalone 5G Strategy Matters More Than Airtel’s

Synopsis: India’s 5G rollout looks impressive, but real-world benefits remain limited due to non-standalone networks and missing use cases. While Airtel took the cheaper route, Jio’s standalone 5G and strategic spectrum bets give it a long-term edge, especially in enterprise, cloud, and industrial applications.

Earlier this year, the Indian government celebrated a major milestone, announcing that 5G services were now available in 99.6 per cent of the country’s districts, with 4.69 lakh 5G sites set up in less than three years since the launch of the scheme. Around 365 million Indians, or roughly 35 per cent of all mobile users, have subscribed to 5G, making this one of the fastest rollouts in the world, following closely after India’s 4G revolution.

However, many Indians who have upgraded to 5G phones find it hard to notice a significant difference. Videos may load a bit faster, uploads might complete slightly quicker, but overall the experience often feels like 4G, just a little better.

The reality behind the impressive numbers is more complicated. The technology being deployed does not yet showcase the full potential of 5G, partly due to certain constraints. More importantly, the breakthrough use case that would make 5G feel truly essential for everyday consumers has not arrived yet, a trend seen not just in India but across the world.

How Is 5G Different From 4G?

Understanding how 5G differs from 4G is key to seeing why the new network feels different, even if only subtly for now. At its core, 5G is a new radio standard that can carry stronger signals than 4G, often using higher frequencies that allow more data to flow. These signals also reduce delay, or latency, which makes activities like streaming or online gaming smoother. The downside is that higher-frequency signals do not travel as far and struggle to pass through walls, creating challenges for coverage.

To make 5G reliable, networks need far more cell sites than 4G ever required. These small towers or antennas are placed on buildings, streetlights, and other structures to ensure that more devices in a given area can get fast, uninterrupted internet.

This density helps avoid the congestion common in 3G and 4G, where hundreds of devices in a single location can slow each other down. But having more cell sites is not enough. The data they handle must travel to the core network and then to servers and data centers. Fiber optic cables are the ideal backbone for this, carrying huge amounts of data quickly and efficiently. 

The real potential of 5G comes into play with advanced applications like remote surgery, autonomous vehicles, and smart factories. These require not just high-speed signals, but also edge computing, which means mini data centers placed close to users so processing happens nearby rather than far away in distant servers. India’s edge computing setup is still in early stages, which limits how much 5G can do today. All of this shows why building 5G networks is far more complex and expensive than rolling out 4G ever was.

But Is 5G Really Different? 

When you look at previous cellular generations, each brought something truly transformative. 3G gave us mobile internet and email, letting our phones do much more than make calls. 4G enabled smooth video streaming and kickstarted the app economy, bringing us services like Uber, Instagram, YouTube, and video calls without buffering. Each generation unlocked entirely new possibilities.

So what has 5G done that 4G could not? For most everyday users, the answer is not much. Phones still do the same things, just a little faster. Videos stream in higher resolution, games download in seconds instead of minutes, and connections in crowded areas hold up better. These improvements are welcome, but they are far from revolutionary. 

There have been attempts to create new experiences that rely on 5G, like the metaverse or virtual reality. But so far, these concepts have not caught on at scale. This raises a question for telecom companies: is it really worth spending lakhs of crores on spectrum for something that offers only incremental gains? Airtel’s vice-chairman Gopal Vittal summed it up last year, saying that 5G has not lived up to its promise globally, and for now, its primary benefit is just speed, a more efficient way of delivering the same gigabyte.

Adoption in India has been enthusiastic, but largely passive. Many users upgrade simply because 5G is available, often at no extra cost, not because they feel a real need for it. The bigger question is whether consumers would pay extra for 5G, and given the current benefits, the answer is probably no. One area where telcos are seeing monetisation potential is fixed wireless access, or FWA. This allows households in semi-urban or rural areas, which lack fixed broadband or satellite internet, to get 5G instead. Around a quarter of 5G usage in India comes from FWA, and Jio has even surpassed T-Mobile in the US to become the largest global FWA provider. Still, this alone may not be enough to turn 5G hype into a widespread, indispensable reality.

Understanding 5G 

To understand why India’s 5G experience feels the way it does, it helps to look at how the network has actually been built. When telecom operators roll out 5G, they can follow one of two paths: Non-Standalone or Standalone. In India’s case, most operators have chosen the first option.

The difference between the two lies in how the network itself is structured. At a basic level, any mobile network has two key parts. One is the radio side, which handles the transmission of signals over specific frequencies. The other is the control side, which acts like the brain of the system. It decides how your phone connects, moves between towers, starts or ends data sessions, and manages the overall flow of traffic. Importantly, these two parts can be upgraded independently.

With Non-Standalone 5G, only the radio side is upgraded to 5G. The control system underneath is still largely built for 4G. This setup is quicker and cheaper to deploy, and it does deliver better speeds than pure 4G. But it also limits what the network can do. Many of the advanced features that 5G promises simply cannot work properly on a 4G-based core.

Standalone 5G takes a very different approach. Instead of building on top of the old system, it creates a completely new network where both the radio and the control layers are designed specifically for 5G. This is what unlocks the technology’s full capabilities, from ultra-low latency to more advanced industrial and enterprise applications. India’s choice of speed over depth helps explain why 5G today feels more like an improved version of 4G rather than something entirely new.

How Does Jio Stand To Benefit From It?

Rivals Took the Easier Route

When India rolled out 5G, Airtel and Vodafone Idea chose the non-standalone path. The logic was straightforward. Building 5G on top of existing 4G networks was far cheaper and much quicker. For telecom operators already weighed down by years of losses after offering ultra-cheap data, conserving capital mattered more than chasing cutting-edge capability.

Jio, however, made a very different call. As India’s largest telecom operator, it committed to a fully standalone 5G network from day one. It was also the only player to bid for the 700 MHz spectrum, a rare low-frequency band that offers better coverage and deeper indoor penetration. This spectrum is particularly valuable for standalone 5G, giving Jio an advantage that its rivals simply do not have. In theory, this puts Jio in a position to deliver what “real” 5G was always supposed to be.

The Gaps in India’s 5G Ecosystem

Jio’s advantage exists within a larger ecosystem that is still incomplete. India’s 5G rollout so far has prioritised wider coverage over network depth. But 5G, especially at higher frequencies, depends heavily on dense cell-site deployment. Without that density, signal strength and performance suffer.

There are other bottlenecks as well. Fiber connectivity remains a major weakness, with only around 46 percent of telecom towers currently connected by optical fibre. On top of that, edge computing infrastructure in India is still in its early stages. While Jio and Airtel are both investing heavily in data centres, which will eventually supply the computing power needed for advanced 5G applications, the ecosystem is far from mature.

Some of these shortcomings come down to limited capital. But there is also a deeper issue at play. Right now, 5G lacks a must-have consumer use case. For the average user, 4G already works well enough, making it harder for telcos to justify aggressive spending.

Where Jio’s 5G Truly Shines

The same features that feel underwhelming to consumers can be transformative for businesses. Ultra-low latency can allow remote operation of heavy machinery at ports. Massive IoT connectivity can link thousands of sensors across factories, farms, and logistics networks. These are areas where standalone 5G really matters.

This is where Jio’s strategy starts to make sense. With a fully standalone network, Jio can go beyond selling connectivity. It can bundle 5G with cloud services and data centres to offer enterprises complete, end-to-end digital solutions. Smart manufacturing, connected healthcare, agricultural drones and automated ports are the kinds of applications Jio appears to be targeting.

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