State of Internet in India: A take on where it stands, and what to expect

By Samartha Raghava Nagabhushanam

India is at the cusp of a telecom revolution. The Indian telecom industry has grown exponentially in the last few decades and is gearing for the next phase of growth through new digital initiatives. Digital India is slowly, but steadily connecting urban and rural India and bridging the gap in quality education, healthcare and financial services through people empowerment.

India is currently the world’s second-largest telecommunications market and has registered strong growth in the past decade and half. According to IBEF, the Indian telecommunication services market is likely to grow by 10.3 percent year-on-year to reach $103.9 billion by 2020. This is consistently higher than the Indian GDP growth rate. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the total telecom subscriber base in December 2015 stood at 1.04 billion, out of which 1.01 billion were mobile subscribers and 25.52 million were wireline subscribers.

The 3G subscriber base in India has grown at a CAGR of 144 percent from 2009 to 2014. In December 2014, 
3G subscribers stood at 9 percent of all mobile subscribers compared to 0.4 percent in 2012. 4G services were launched in India in 2012 and by December 2014 the subscriber base had touched 0.4 million.

According to the Deloitte report, average data consumption per user in 2014 was 688 MB per user for 3G and 216 MB per user for 2G. On an average, a 3G user consumed about 3 times data payloads as compared to 2G counterparts. Further, with high smartphone usage and lower data tariffs, India has already started experiencing S-curve data growth and this trend is expected to continue in the near future.

Keeping the current growth trajectory in mind, the telecom and the tower companies need to go beyond their traditional area of expertise to meet the requirements of the telecom players that are looking to invest in small cells and Wi-Fi sites.

The telecom sector can leverage and depend upon emerging technology solutions that will relieve the pressure of this explosive growth on their infrastructures and deliver a consistently fast, reliable secure Internet experience to their users. This will require them to start interacting with new ecosystem partners like Wi-Fi players, cable players, other emerging solution providers, in addition to the already existing telecom and equipment players to come up with innovative ways to address the demands and growth.

Though the Indian telecom sector is investing billions of dollars in upgrading the infrastructure, they are still grappling with rising instances of poor network and weak signal strength across different parts of the country. This portends the tough times facing the sector to meet the explosion of mobile subscriber base and drastic change in data consumption which has happened in the last three years and is going to compound over the next five years. Home to the planet’s biggest population of millennial, the demands placed on telecom companies to look for innovative solutions to provide a better user experience, are only set to rise.

The magnitude of the problem cannot be solely resolved through upgraded networks or base station capabilities or even launching newer generations of cellular technologies. If you take the instance of broadband, the optical networks in urban areas is not optimised to solve poor bandwidth and network coverage issues due to limited router capabilities.

The next in telecom evolution is in fixing the last mile connectivity problems. This is the turning point wherein signals reach the full strength inside buildings and closed spaces without modifications to the existing building infrastructure either by the telecom operator or at the subscribers’ premises. 

Conventional building designs in India are not conducive to optimise cellular and network signal strength inside homes or closed spaces. High usage of brick and mortar, concrete etc. weakens signal strength that in turn impacts network coverage and signal bandwidth inside homes. Standard techniques deployed by telecom operators and mobile device manufactures ignore this fundamental problem of in-home connectivity. Traditional methods also fail to address the moot issue that majority of voice or video calls, internet usage etc. happens inside closed spaces. Weak signal strengths therefore lead to call drops, garbled voice, poor audio and video quality to name a few.

The redeeming factor is that disruptive start-ups operating in the cellular network and broadband industry domain are solving the last mile connectivity challenges for millions of consumers in India and emerging markets through globally patented products. What’s even more heartening is that India is at the forefront of the product design, engineering, manufacturing and growth story. In the times to come, globally disruptive telecom technology will have the ‘made in India’ stamp.

The author is MD & CEO of 5BARz India Private Ltd, and envisions putting out the most disruptive technology products and solutions from India to the world.