Telecom industry’s contribution to the country’s GDP is expected to reach 8.2%. A total of 4 million people are currently employed by the Telecom Sector in India. It is on its way to becoming the second-largest smartphone market globally by 2025 with a billion installed devices and over 900 million unique mobile subscribers.
Nearly 90 million 5G connections have been estimated to be subscribed by 2025. Telecom tower tenancy has been projected to increase threefold by 2022 with the expansion of 4G and the onset of 5G technologies. 5G is expected to be a game changer for the telecom industry by yielding enormous economic opportunities by 2023. India has the potential to unlock US$ 48.69 billion through the deployment of 5G over the next four years. The Indian telecom sector revenue stood at US$ 26.51 billion in FY20.
As of January 2020, more than 542 banks were given accessibility to provide mobile banking services in India. Transactions through Unified Payments Interface (UPI) stood at 1.24 billion by March 2020, valued at US$ 29.47 billion.
The Department of Information Technology intends to set up over 1 million internet-enabled common service centres across India as per the National e-Governance Plan. The Department of Telecommunication has launched ‘Tarang Sanchar’ - a web portal sharing information on mobile towers and EMF Emission Compliances. Revenue from the telecom equipment sector has been projected to grow to US$ 26.38 billion by 2021.
More than 70 companies have received the approval to provide MVNO services, from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) . DoT is targeting a combination of 100% broadband connectivity in the villages, 55% fiberisation of mobile towers, average broadband speeds of 25 mbps and 30 lakh kms of optic fibre rollouts by December 2022. Till date, optical fiber cables have been laid over 100,000 gram panchayats. India achieved 100% digitisation of its cable TV network in July 2019 and Digital India is expected to create US$ 1.3 trillion business opportunities by 2022.