A snapshot of India’s growing telecoms market
India is recognized as the second largest market globally, of telecoms subscriptions, internet subscribers and app downloads. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast, the number of internet subscribers in India, is expected to double to 829 million by 2021, with further mention of the country having 2 billion networked devices by 2021. As such, the pressure is mounting for mobile operators to extend coverage to meet growing consumer demands.
A vast number of government initiatives and regulations, will see a further increase in the number of internet users. The growth that is expected from this, will require the stringent enforcement of data residency laws that, according to reports, will require more data center capacity.
The Government of India is planning to develop and expand their smart cities initiative, where IOT will play a fundamental role in its development. These projects are being rated under five key parameters: planning, technology, governance, services and finance. At present, greater investment is required, to successfully implement higher living, connected communities, made possible by integrated, unified software systems.
The telecoms sector is determined to narrow the urban-rural divide by offering citizens more access to internet and network connectivity in order to foster an active digital society. The challenge, is the amount of spectrum available for commercial use, which remains relatively low in comparison to other countries. Operators maintain that base pricing remains too high especially for 5G airwaves, which may hinder progress in achieving a broader scope of connectivity among consumers in the future.
The telecoms market in India is growing at a fast rate. In an attempt to meet the demands of mobile subscribers and data consumption, high capacity bandwidth networks are required to facilitate the exponential growth in traffic. The smart cities venture is built on the principle of a developed, advanced infrastructure, allowing residents to be fully connected to improve levels of efficiency, for a greater quality of life. With billions of people to connect across a multitude of densely populated regions in India, focusing on the development of an improved, high-quality infrastructure overall, will help address bandwidth and data quality requirements for mass consumption in the long-term.