Indian Telecom Sector to Grow Further and Beyond by 2020

The telecom sector of India has gained immense momentum over the past few years to set new benchmarks and touch new heights. Even when we are sitting in our room, we are a click away from the rest of the world. As a result of the increasing consumer base, the telecom industry has been thriving. Introduction of new technology in handsets and connection providers have taken the user experience to new heights.

According to a latest analysis, India is one of the largest markets for mobile phones, internet users as well as mobile subscribers, and experts are of opinion that it’s just the beginning of even bigger era for the telecom sector.

According to the latest projection by mobile trade association GSMA, the country will have one billion unique mobile subscribers by the year 2020, up from 616 million unique users as of June 2016.

What changed between 2000 and 2016?

Remember those early days of the millennium? Heavy handsets, expensive connections, barely audible connection, very high outgoing as well as incoming expenses, limited the use of mobile phones to a very small fragment of population.

Once considered a luxury, Indian telecom operators now offer new subscription for new connections at no charge (or at very nominal cost). The network coverage has also improved massively over the past two decades with many of the remote places offering LTE connectivity now.

These new and improved factors, coupled with the affordable pricing of devices, have played a very important role in acquiring new users. These features will also play an instrumental role in on-boarding nearly 330 million people in the next four years, GSMA added.

The GSMA data added that many of these new mobile subscribers will have access to 4G LTE network capability. It further stated that the number of 4G connections in India is projected to grow from 3 million as of the end of 2015 to 280 million in next four years. The report also added that India will have 670 million registered connection base who will have access to 3G or 4G connectivity.

India crossed one billion mobile subscriber base last year (2015), according to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). The regulator of the telecom sector in India had noted at the time of the one billion million subscriptions that 902 million were active in the month of October last year. But not all were unique mobile subscribers. GSMA forecasts that the country will have 1.4 billion registered mobile subscribers by 2020.

To add further sweetness to the deal, all the telecom giants of the country such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Rcom, Reliance Jio etc have been trying to grab the market. This race between the giants is expected to be beneficial for the masses.

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