Indian Telecom market expected to cross Rs 6.6 trillion revenue mark by 2020
New Delhi, August 3, 2017: The number of internet subscribers in India was 391.50 million by the end of 2016 making India globally the 2nd highest in terms of internet users, said Minister of Communications Manoj Sinha while speaking at a Workshop on Telecom India here.
Going by the growth of mobile data traffic by 76 per cent in India in 2016 primarily attributed to increased smart phone penetration, the Indian Telecom market is expected to cross the Rs 6.6 trillion revenue mark by the year 2020, said Sinha.
This growing usage of smart phones, especially in urban areas, has increased the usage of internet on hand-held devices – in 2016, 559 megabytes of mobile data was generated per month by an average smart phone, up from 430megabytes per month in 2015.Consumption of video content is also forecasted to be 75 percent of India’s mobile data traffic by 2021, compared to 49 percent in 2016.
Sinha said that advancements in innovative IoT technologies, like health monitors, smart transport, smart meters among others, is projected to result in 21 per cent increase in M2M services. These advances will result in a significant growth of mobile data, and as the telecom sector moves to newer technologies, TSPs will need to identify innovative avenues to monetise this data opportunity.
Sinha said that one of the projects under the ‘Digital India’ initiative was ‘BharatNet’, launched to deploy high-speed optical fiber cables to connect 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayat across the country by 2018. This project would also help in increasing the fiberized sites in India which currently stands at less than 20 per cent as compared to other developed countries.
The project is being implemented in Phases, with more than100,000 gram panchayats connected under Phase-I as of July2017 and states like Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh neared 100 per cent completion.