This application relates to the field of communications technologies, and discloses a bandwidth indication method and apparatus, to provide a solution of indicating, by a base station, an allocated bandwidth part to a terminal when the terminal does not know a carrier bandwidth. The method is: determining, by the base station, a virtual bandwidth allocated to the terminal, where the virtual bandwidth is a part of a carrier bandwidth, and a bandwidth allocated to the terminal falls within the virtual bandwidth; and sending, by the base station, position information of the virtual bandwidth to the terminal, where the position information is used to indicate a position of the virtual bandwidth.