India's Adani Abandons 5G Market Entry, Sells Frequencies to Airtel
Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Airtel announced on April 22, 2025, that it has signed an agreement to acquire 400 MHz width of the 26 GHz band from Adani Data Networks, part of the country's Adani Group. Airtel, which was aiming to enter the Indian 5G telecommunications market,...
2025/05/27
Posted on 2025/05/27
Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Airtel announced on April 22, 2025, that it has signed an agreement to acquire 400 MHz width of the 26 GHz band from Adani Data Networks, a subsidiary of the country's Adani Group. The Adani Group had been aiming to enter the 5G telecommunications market in India, but this sale of spectrum is seen as a decision to essentially exit the market.
Adani Group, an emerging Indian conglomerate that has experienced rapid growth in the port, energy, and infrastructure sectors, won the bid for this frequency band in the country's 5G frequency band auction in 2022 for 2.12 billion rupees (approximately 3.5 billion yen). The company had announced its intention to enter the telecommunications market in the industrial 5G field, including private 5G for airports, ports, logistics, power generation, distribution, manufacturing, and other businesses, and was also seeking collaboration with Nokia. However, the company did not make progress in utilizing the acquired frequency bands and was the subject of an investigation by Indian regulators earlier this year.
The Indian telecommunications market has so far been an oligopoly structure with the three major players, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea. Of these, Airtel and Reliance will both begin offering 5G services in 2022. On the other hand, Vodafone Idea, which is facing financial challenges, has been second-guessing its 5G deployment and will finally launch 5G services in March 2025. Under these circumstances, the Adani Group had attracted a certain amount of expectation as a new player that would facilitate industry restructuring. However, the withdrawal may further strengthen the two-party structure of Airtel and Reliance in the future.
