INDIA WILL HAVE 1 BILLION INTERNET USERS BY THIS FISCAL: JYOTIRADITYA SCINDIA

The BharatNet investments in rural and remote connectivity are the largest in the world, says Minister of Communications and Development of North Eastern Region; almost 2.14 lakh gram panchayats were connected in the first phase and the next phase is about connecting another 2.64 lakh gram panchayats, he says, adding that a central network operating hub will be put in place for maintenance

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With increasing data usage, the Internet market has grown from around 250 million to 974 million subscribers, says Minister of Communications and Development of North Eastern Region (DONER) Jyotiraditya Scindia. Stressing on the role of innovation and investment, Mr. Scindia discusses the potential of India’s telecom industry and the way ahead for improving connectivity. Edited excerpts:

This year’s theme for The India Mobile Congress (IMC) is “Innovate to Transform”. What’s the message here for the domestic telecom industry?

India has already proven itself to be the second largest telecom market in the world. In the last eleven years of Prime Minister Modi’s government, not only have we grown on the mobile market from roughly 1 billion to 1.2 billion customers; we have also hugely grown data usage and the Internet market from around 250 million to 974 million Internet subscribers. The broadband market, with speeds greater than 2 Megabits per second (Mbps), has grown from 66 million in 2014 to 940 million today. We should be able to hit one billion Internet users within the first half of next year, or even within this fiscal year.

That’s a huge exponential expansion and penetration of the market that we’ve seen. At the same time, India has also proven to the world the law of economies of scale, where call price has gone down from 50 paise a minute to 0.003 paise per minute; where data has gone from ₹287 a GB to ₹9 a GB. We are today the cheapest data market in the world; the global average is $2.49. We are roughly at 11 cents. We have 5% of the world average cost.