Over 100 million Indians can get gigabit connectivity by 2030 with robust digital infrastructure

New Delhi, May 13
As India continues to build a robust and resilient core digital infrastructure, the country can achieve gigabit connectivity to all households or at least 100-110 million households by 2030, industry experts have said.

While India is the leader when it comes to data consumption on mobile broadband and is the fastest-growing mobile broadband market in the world, the country still lags in fixed or wired broadband as compared to developed nations.

According to the independent think tank Broadband India Forum (BIF), data shows that there is an average data consumption of 187 GB per month in India which is still lower than the US data consumption of 641 GB per month.

Furthermore, fixed broadband subscriptions in India are at a mere 2.85 per 100 people, and almost one-fourth of the global average.

Speaking at a conference in the capital, the industry experts stressed the need for a much higher availability of optic fibre to cater to the exponentially increasing quantum of data.

"With fixed broadband data usage reaching 10-20 times mobile data consumption per capita, we need a minimum 20 per cent annual growth rate in fixed broadband subscriptions over the next six years to reach 100 million additional fibre connections," said TV Ramachandran, President, BIF.

The conference dwelled on building key elements of digital infrastructure like, optic fibre, mobile towers, licensed spectrum, data centres and Wi-Fi, CDNs, undersea cables, etc.

RS Sharma, former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), said that India needs to aggressively work to create massive and inclusive optical fibre infrastructure to reach at par with China, US, and Europe in fibre broadband.

"We also need to create millions of Wi-Fi hotspots in the country which ensures affordable broadband availability to our people in rural and semi-urban areas," said Sharma.