Indian telco market likely to cross Rs 6.6 trillion revenue mark by 2020

The Indian telecom market is expected to cross the Rs 6.6 trillion revenue mark by the year 2020, Minister of Communication Manoj Sinha said, adding that by the end of 2016 the number of internet subscribers in India was 391.50 million, thus making India globally the second highest in terms of internet users.
 
The Indian telecom industry has seen a paradigm shift from a voice-centric market to a data-centric market. 

While voice business still contributes a large chunk towards operator revenues, data revenues have shown an exponential growth trajectory over the last few years, said Sinha, who was speaking at a workshop on Telecom India. 
           
The minister further informed that mobile data traffic also grew by 76% in India in 2016, primarily attributed to increased smart phone penetration. 

This growing usage of smart phones, especially in urban areas, has increased the usage of internet on hand-held devices – in 2016, 559 megabytes of mobile data was generated per month by an average smart phone, up from 430 megabytes per month in 2015. 

Consumption of video content is also forecasted to be 75% of India’s mobile data traffic by 2021, compared to 49% in 2016.