India will have a billion mobile phone users by 2020: GSMA
Nearly every Indian will be a mobile subscriber by 2020.
India is already one of the largest markets for mobile phones, internet users, and mobile subscribers, and experts believe it’s just the beginning of even bigger things to come.
The country will have one billion unique mobile subscribers by 2020, up from 616 million unique users as of June 2016, according to projections by mobile trade association GSMA.
You May Also Like
Once considered a luxury, Indian telecom operators now offer new subscription at no charge (or at nominal cost). The network coverage has also improved significantly over the past two decades with many of the remote places offering LTE connectivity now.
These factors, coupled with the prices of devices getting cheaper, will play an instrumental role in nearly 330 million people getting a mobile subscription in next four years, GSMA added.
Many of these new mobile subscribers will have access to 4G LTE network capability. GSMA says that it projects the number of 4G connections in India to grow from 3 million as of the end of 2015 to 280 million in next four years. The report adds that India will have 670 million registered connection base with access to 3G or 4G connectivity.
India crossed one billion mobile subscriber base last year, according to TRAI. The regulator of the telecom sector in India had noted at the time of the one billion million subscriptions, 902 million were active in October last year. But not all were unique mobile subscribers, TRAI had noted. GSMA forecasts that India will have 1.4 billion registered mobile subscriber by 2020.
