How Telecom Operators Can Best Monetize 5G FWA

5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) offers both mobile and fixed-line telecom operators a major revenue opportunity by delivering high-speed broadband to unserved and underserved households and businesses, leveraging existing 5G networks for lower capital expenditure than fiber deployment.

5G FWA offers ultra-high speeds, low latency, and massive capacity without the need to break ground and lay fiber cables. With broadband connectivity recognized as a vital enabler of economic growth and societal well-being, FWA broadband technology is increasingly seen as an essential tool in connecting consumers and businesses, and as a significant revenue opportunity for operators.

Why is 5G FWA a major revenue opportunity for telecom operators?

According to Omdia’s report, 5G FWA Go-to-Market Strategies – 2025, 5G FWA is the fastest-growing broadband access technology globally, with subscriptions set to more than double by 2030.

Led by rapid growth in India, where operators are connecting the unconnected, and rural expansion in the US, FWA subscriptions are predicted to grow from 71 million in 2024 to 150 million by 2030.

Technological advancements in 5G also mean that premium 5G FWA offerings are capturing a larger share of the market, driving a $46bn revenue opportunity by 2030, with Quality of Experience (QoE) becoming a critical differentiator allowing Tier 1 operators to upsell based on service reliability, latency, and user-specific performance - particularly for gamers, remote workers, and video streamers. This marks a detraction from historical speed or bandwidth competitive differentiation and sets FWA up to overtake DSL and become the second most common broadband access technology behind fiber after 2030. The global opportunity is significant, with over one billion households without fixed broadband, and an underserved market of secondary homes and SMEs eager for disruption of DSL, cable, or single-provider fiber.

What are the most profitable 5G FWA segments for MNOs?

Consumer residential broadband

The largest addressable market for 5G FWA is residential broadband in unserved and underserved areas, historically served by legacy technologies like DSL or cable, and deemed by operators as not economically viable for fiber deployment. In other cases, there might only be single-provider fiber available, creating a natural opportunity for competition.

Rural broadband

Another large consumer market is primary homes in rural areas and secondary homes and leisure properties, also in rural and underserved locations. India and the rural US are healthy examples for opportunity, as well as developed markets like Norway, Sweden, and Finland which have over one million secondary homes or cottages between them.

SMEs, businesses, and enterprise broadband

Pop-up, temporary, and nomadic businesses like retailers previously served by mobile hotspots and dongles, present a good opportunity for FWA, along with cafes and restaurants where 5G FWA delivers faster deployment and operational flexibility for IoT-enabled payment terminals.

Larger SMEs and smaller enterprises with fewer than 100 employees also represent a highly profitable vertical for 5G FWA, delivering business-grade connectivity without lengthy fiber installation timelines to branch offices, remote work locations, and temporary sites requiring reliable, high-speed internet for cloud applications, video conferencing, and client collaboration.​

Other specialist enterprise verticals include industrial and agricultural use cases from factories, to mines, to power stations, to farming.

Maritime applications also have potential, combining local, roaming, and satellite connectivity for broadband access at sea, with 5G FWA particularly effective in a near-shore capacity, offering fiber-like speeds and low latency compared to traditional satellite.

Temporary and rapid deployments

5G FWA also lends itself to emergency and temporary internet infrastructure for disaster recovery, or other emergency and rapid deployment sites, with flexible pay-as-you-go pricing models suitable for short-term deployments.​

Which pricing and packaging strategies increase 5G FWA revenue?

According to Ericsson, research data from 139 countries show that more than three-quarters of service providers are now offering FWA services, with one-third offering 5G FWA in 2025, compared to one-fifth a year ago. 5G FWA has now been launched on all continents.

Most FWA packages are designed around either a volume-based or speed-based tariff structure and price plans are broadly in line with fixed broadband offerings.

For volume-based packages, the Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) is typically an indoor wireless device with a 5G radio and WiFi router placed in a window. As such the device is considered nomadic and can be moved to a different location as long as the subscription is still valid and in a coverage area. 

For a speed- or bandwidth-based offering, the CPE is typically a 5G radio-capable device mounted on the exterior of the premises. This could also be an advanced antenna arrangement mounted on the roof and connected to a WiFi router within the building. This setup allows for better positioning to deliver superior quality of service and enables remote configuration and fault management.

Because speed-based FWA connections are not considered mobile, they are usually marketed to verified locations, where network performance is designed to meet agreed service levels. As a result, speed-based FWA offerings can command a pricing premium versus volume-based offerings.

CPE as a 5G FWA differentiator

MNOs and service providers typically use a mix of technology offerings, including 4G and 5G, and CPE variants, including indoor and outdoor, to create different price and speed tiers targeting different market segments.

Research from Ericsson demonstrates that entry level FWA offerings use a heavy mix of 4G and indoor CPE, with speeds up to 20Mbps and a price point that delivers over 2x mobile broadband ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) levels.

Meanwhile, high-end offerings make good use of 5G in the mix, along with outdoor CPE, to deliver speeds up to 500Mbps and tariff commanding up to 5x mobile broadband ARPU levels. 

A study from Huawei provides further evidence that the speed-tiered model generates higher ARPU compared to conventional fixed broadband offerings and earlier generation FWA, with Middle Eastern operators reporting 30-80% higher ARPU for 5G FWA customers compared to 4G FWA users.

But the real proof comes from T-Mobile’s Q2 2025 performance, which illustrates this effect in practice. While other operators are slashing prices to compete with the declining cost of data, T-Mobile US is leveraging 5G FWA and service bundling to move further up the value stack and generate higher ARPU.

The company reported a 5% year-over-year increase in postpaid ARPU in Q2 2025, the highest growth in eight years, driven by customers upgrading to premium plans, after the operator incentivized customers to opt for higher-tier services, blending 5G connectivity with bundled internet, streaming, and small business solutions.

In terms of reach, T-Mobile is deploying 5G FWA to access rural and suburban markets where competitors are either absent or overpriced and under-differentiated. In terms of value, T-Mobile isn't just selling internet access, it's selling an ecosystem - by bundling low-cost of entry and ease of setup, with media streaming or smart home security applications. 

In this way, T-Mobile is raising the bar in value by offering premium tiers with faster speeds, unlimited data, and business-grade reliability over 5G.

Ultimately however, price positioning is driven primarily by local broadband market dynamics. In general, broadband pricing is determined by bandwidth and up/download speeds - a mechanic that remains true across all technologies whether cellular, fiber, cable, DSL, or FWA.

What 5G does for FWA is increase the performance and speed of cellular technology and therefore gives MNOs another lever to pull in the product mix to address different customer needs and segments, at a variety of price points.

What are the main cost and ROI drivers for 5G FWA?

But as with any hardware-based product, the CPE itself can represent significant barriers to FWA adoption, particularly in price-sensitive markets. So, the trend has been that operators increasingly waive upfront CPE costs or offer subsidized equipment as an incentive and focus on building value elsewhere in the stack.

The main cost and ROI drivers for FWA are time to market, leverage of existing 5G assets, and lower infrastructure costs due to not needing to dig fiber.  

With FWA, operators benefit from quick deployment using indoor or outdoor CPE, but according to Ericsson, outdoor CPE enables two to three times more connections per site due to better spectral efficiency, in turn delivering higher ARPU through speed-based tariffs up to 500 Mbps. On the other hand, with indoor CPE, the operator benefits from being able to get the customer to self-install.

Either way, shared spectrum boosts capacity utilization and can enable fixed-like pricing under $75 per month, further enhancing returns on 5G investments.

Advanced CPE options enable tiered device bundling, with higher-priced FWA plans featuring premium CPE with WiFi 6 support, MIMO antenna technology, and improved reception capabilities, allowing operators to segment customers by equipment preferences and justify pricing differentiation. This approach reduces perceived risk for price-sensitive customers—who receive basic CPE—while capturing premium customers and businesses willing to pay more for superior network performance.

Premium 5G FWA pricing models

Premium FWA pricing models incorporate Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees alongside speed differentiation and the general trend is to allow unlimited data consumption within speed-tiered service levels. This model addresses enterprise customer concerns regarding data sufficiency while maintaining predictable network performance.​

With 5G FWA, network slicing and priority service access can enable additional revenue opportunities. Operators can offer premium FWA tiers with guaranteed low-latency priority, enhanced peak-hour performance, and priority access to network resources. Enterprise customers, particularly data-intensive businesses in manufacturing, logistics, and professional services have demonstrated a willingness to pay for performance guarantees.

AI adoption in 5G

Although it’s still early days for widespread AI and ML adoption within core 5G networks, there is some evidence to suggest that AI has a role to play in service-level tiering for 5G FWA. The most obvious applications are for things like intelligent inferences for finding cell outages, assisting in network system configuration changes and optimization, or even for proactive handover in high-stakes applications, like emergency services, where reliable and secure handover is needed for users moving out of and into FWA cells. 

What are the deployment and network considerations for 5G FWA?

As with previous generations of cellular technology, the trade-off for higher bandwidth is more limited coverage, and this remains true of 5G. 5G fixed wireless access points have limited reach and may face interference, with wavelengths struggling to penetrate walls. This requires them to be placed closer together than previous wireless technologies.

5G FWA radio units require line-of-sight connectivity to the nearest cell tower as wavelengths have a narrow range and are easily obstructed by buildings, even trees. However, once set up, coverage in the area should remain consistent as the CPE remains stationary, although this may also mean there is little opportunity to grow the investment, especially in the case of rural consumer connectivity. However, the investment will still yield a net positive versus laying fiber.

For effective coverage, 5G networks are mainly focused on sub-6GHz bands, because of the shorter transmission distance and lower building penetration of mmWave. However, mmWave has its place for data-showering hotspots such as venues or busy metro areas with lots of users.

For this reason, the 24-39 GHz mmWave segment is projected to experience significant growth in the 5G FWA market, delivering high-bandwidth WLAN coverage. Meanwhile, mid-band spectrum—2 GHz to 6GHz—is considered the ideal for FWA service as it gives 10 times the capacity to 4G.

What are the key risks in monetizing 5G FWA and how can operators mitigate them?

The main concern for any operator will be achieving the right balance of spectrum and cell placement to fulfil demand based on expected consumption and adoption. This includes appropriate backhaul capacity to base stations serving FWA customers as well as temporary connections from mobile consumers to avoid congestion.

When catering to the mass market of consumer mobile devices, this can sometimes be a moving target, however, the benefit of 5G FWA is that utilization of resources should remain relatively consistent due to the fixed nature of the end-user equipment.

Furthermore, the entire proposition of 5G FWA is based on the premise of further leveraging investments into 5G mobile infrastructure and reusing and optimizing available spectrum for different customer segments.

CPE is another major consideration in the 5G FWA equation. As mentioned above, the price of 5G FWA CPE can be an obstacle to adoption, but most operators will subsidize the equipment in order to move further up the value stack. CPE can also be used as a service differentiator, as 5G FWA CPE can be a router, modem, or mobile device that supports 5G and has a wide range of capabilities.

Outdoor CPE, such as a 5G radio and antenna on the roof of a building, requires specialist installation but provides the best quality of service experience in terms of ensuring line-of-sight to the base station and maximum coverage of the local area. This also benefits the operator in terms of creating the most consistent utilization of network resources. The downside is that the installation requires operator intervention and may be slower to deploy as a result.

Indoor CPE overcomes these challenges as kit that can be mailed to the consumer for self-installation. This kind of unit would typically be a router that needs positioning in a window. But while this is the fastest route to market and revenue, the downside is that self-installed CPE introduces a greater chance of poor experience, largely due to bad positioning of the device, and could potentially increase the support costs for resolution.

How can operators build a sustainable 5G FWA business model?

FWA leverages 5G’s multi-use case network scale to great benefit. Fixed and mobile telecom operators and service providers can make use of shared investments to monetize multiple use cases across both traditional mobile smartphone segments and fixed-line-like broadband consumers and enterprises, including fixed, mobile, and FWA bundling, as well as service and ecosystem bundling to spread risks and lower initial upfront investments to new use cases.

Some savvy carriers are even using FWA as a ‘FTTP beachhead’ strategy, deploying 5G FWA to areas where fiber is planned for deployment, and using this to test the market or introduce migration paths for transitioning FWA customers to fiber once available. This approach not only speeds up time to market and generates interim revenue from underserved areas but also creates customer relationships that can be leveraged for eventual upgrade to future fixed-line and wireless services.

In many ways, 5G FWA is the one 5G application that is practical, immediately profitable, and desperately needed - capable of providing high-speed, high-reliability cellular broadband to business sites where traditional fixed lines are unavailable, unreliable, or too costly.

Serving enterprises will require a significant shift in mindset however, especially multinationals, which will require a global solution. Forward thinking operators in this case will need to partner with and sell other operators' connectivity to deliver global availability. But as we see above, the revenue potential of FWA is too significant to ignore, forcing many to change a long-standing mindset of non-cooperation.

The easy solution is to partner with a specialist like Eseye that can provide an instant, white-label managed FWA service, allowing operators to go to market quickly and profitably to your global enterprise customers.

5G makes available a level of performance that will facilitate demanding fixed-equivalent connections to perform over cellular and IoT traffic to increase significantly. In this respect, 5G FWA is a killer application that can be used to deliver connected services including enhanced mobile broadband, massive IoT, and mission-critical communications, on a global scale.