Fixed wireless access (FWA) is home or office broadband that reaches the building by a radio signal from a nearby tower, instead of by a cable. It is also called wireless broadband or, when it uses 5G, 5G home broadband. In India, the mobile operators sell it under their own brand names.
An FWA connection has two pieces at the customer's end. The first is an outdoor unit, a small receiver with an antenna, fixed to a roof, a wall or a window. It picks up the signal from a tower, usually a few hundred metres to a few kilometres away. The second is an indoor unit, which spreads the connection through the home over Wi-Fi. Sometimes the two are combined in one box. The indoor unit often works as the home gateway.
There are two main kinds of FWA. The first kind uses a mobile operator's 5G or 4G network. The same towers and spectrum that serve phones also serve homes. The second kind uses equipment built only for fixed links, often in frequency bands that need no licence. Smaller internet providers use this kind to reach towns and villages.
Imagine a family that moves into a new colony on the edge of Jaipur. The colony is two years old, and no operator has laid fibre to it yet. The family books 5G home broadband. A technician fixes the outdoor unit to the parapet of their roof, pointing towards a tower 1.5 kilometres away, and runs one cable down to the indoor unit. Within an hour, the family has a 100 megabits-a-second connection. They pay a monthly plan, which the operator's telecom billing system charges like any other broadband plan.
FWA is quick and cheap to install, because nothing is dug. But it has limits. The home shares the tower's capacity with the phones around it. Speeds can drop in the evening, when many people use the tower. Walls, trees and heavy rain also weaken the signal. So operators often limit how many FWA homes each tower sector may serve.
How does FWA differ from a passive optical network (PON)? PON brings a fibre to the home and gives steadier, higher speeds. FWA trades some speed and stability for speed of installation. In India, FWA has grown fast since the radio networks moved to 5G, because operators had spare 5G capacity and many homes still had no fibre. The other options are described in fixed broadband access.