India’s telecom operators may own the spectrum, but at the country’s newest airports and office towers, they just don’t control the network anymore.

Navi Mumbai International Airport gave them a reality check in late December. Adani Airport Holdings, the company that operates the airport, asked telcos—Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea—to cough up Rs 92 lakh every month to access the building’s built-in 5G network and provide services to passengers.

It resulted in a standoff between the parties, leaving passengers at the airport stranded in a network-dead zone. It’s also one of the early signs of a deeper change in India’s telecom infrastructure.

Until recently, telecom operators controlled connectivity inside buildings. If a mall, airport, or an IT park needed coverage, these companies installed their own equipment because they owned the spectrum and the licence. Landlords only hosted the hardware.

5G is reversing that arrangement.

Most 5G networks operate on higher-frequency radio waves. Those waves can carry far more data, which is great for streaming video or running connected devices, but they weaken quickly when they hit walls, ceilings, and other physical barriers.

Which means 5G needs far more equipment indoors.

Instead of one antenna covering a large space, buildings often need dozens of small signal nodes placed across corridors, ceilings, and basements. These systems are typically connected through something called a distributed antenna system (DAS)—essentially a network of many small antennas spread throughout a building that relay signals from telecom operators.

Installing such a system once is expensive. Replicating that for each telecom operator is redundant.

As a senior executive at a real-estate consultancy put it, “it’s not an economically viable or efficient choice.”

“From a real-estate developer’s perspective, ensuring carrier-neutral access ensures a fair playing ground and better connectivity,” they added.

Enter the intermediaries.

Landlords are increasingly choosing to appoint neutral-host firms—the likes of Ibus Networks and Cloudextel—to build shared indoor networks and allow telcos to plug into them. That way, connectivity becomes part of the property, and ceilings, basements, and corridors turn into telecom real estate.

The policy helps them, too. India’s draft telecom network rules proposeKhaitan & CoIndia’s telecom reform: DoT releases draft authorisation for Telecommunication Network Rules, 2025 a new category of third-party infra providers, allowing them to own and operate active indoor infrastructure without holding spectrum.

© The Ken