Chennai: India will have 920 million unique mobile subscribers by 2025, generating almost a quarter of the world’s new connections, an industry body has said.
The number includes 88 million 5G connections and it said there were close to 750 million unique subscribers at the end of 2018 and expected to reach almost 920 million by 2025.
“5G connections in India are forecast to reach 88 million by 2025…This will leave India trailing regional peers such as China, which is set to see almost 30 per cent of its total connection base on 5G by 2025,” the intelligence report by GSMA said.
“India alone will generate almost a quarter of the world’s new mobile subscribers over this period,” said the report.
GSMA said the Indian mobile market will return to revenue growth in the second half of the year and continue to grow modestly till 2025. It however indicated that market revenues will remain below the level of 2016.
According to GSMA, data consumption pattern in India on 4G network supports in time uptake of new 5G devices and services. The emergence of 5G ecosystem in India will depend on telecom operators’ ability to invest in network which requires favourable support on policy and regulatory fronts, it noted.
On a quarterly basis, revenues have been declining year-on-year since mid 2016 and India has one of the world’s lowest average revenue per person (ARPU), said GSMA and estimated that total mobile revenues in India have dipped more than 20 per cent over the period.
GSMA has recommended reduction in licence fee from eight to six per cent and the spectrum fee from three to eight per cent to one per cent to reduce financial constraints on telecom players. The report said India is likely to be the second largest smartphone market by 2025 with around one billion installed devices.