Investment/Major Development

With daily increasing subscriber base, there have been a lot of investment and development in the sector. FDI inflow in the telecom sector stood at US$ 39.32 billion between April 2000-March 2024.

Some of the developments in the recent past are:

• The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and IIT Roorkee have partnered to develop a "Millimetre Wave Transceiver for 5G Rural Connectivity," supported by the Telecom Technology Development Fund. The project aims to improve affordable broadband and mobile services, bridging India’s digital divide.
• Vodafone Idea (Vi), boosted by a recent equity funding, plans to open more retail outlets to increase the sales.
• India's Bharat 6G alliance and the European telecom industry organization Industry are planning to establish a partnership. This partnership will facilitate cooperation between the two groups in the development of 6G technology.
• To make India 5G-ready, there is a push for fiberisation of telecom towers. Currently, 36% of towers are fiberized, and plans involve deploying 12 lakh towers.
• As of March 2023, Jio partners with EESL to provide one million smart prepaid meters in Bihar.
• In May 2023, STT GDC invested Rs. 2,000 crore (US$ 242.33 million) in two more data centres in Pune.
• As of March 2023, the wireless subscriber base of Jio stood at 430.23 million, followed by Bharti Airtel (235.78 million), Vodafone Idea 124.82 million, BSNL 21.77 million and Intech Online Pvt. Ltd. 0.23 million.
• Total broadband subscriptions in the country grew from 149.75 million in FY16 to 846.57 million in FY23 (April-March). The number of wired broadband subscriptions stood at 33.49 million in FY23 (Until March 2023). Wireless broadband subscribers stood at 813.08 million in FY23. As of June 2023, the top five service providers were as follows: Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd stood at 438.58 million, followed by Bharti Airtel (241.52 million), Vodafone Idea (124.89 million), and BSNL (20.93 million).
• As per TRAI, average wireless data usage per wireless data subscriber was 17.11 GB per month in December 2022 from 61.66 MB in March 2014.
• The aggregated data consumed as on 31^st December 2022 was 14,024,519 GB. The total wireless data usage in India grew at a rate of 0.96% from 40,126 PB in September 2022 to 40,512 PB in December 2022. The contribution of 2G, 3G and 4G data usage to the total volume of wireless data usage was at 0.14%, 0.93% and 98.93%.
• In September 2022, Vodafone Idea partnered with Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) called InViCT to set up a telecom Centre of Excellence.
• In Q1 FY22, Indian technology, media, and telecom (TMT) sector lead the M&A market in India bagging deals worth US$ 11.5 billion.
• In February 2022, Bharti Airtel acquired 10% strategic stake in a Singapore-based start-up, Aqilliz.
• In January 2022, Google made a US$ 1 billion investment in Airtel through the India Digitization Fund.
• In October 2021, Vodafone Idea stated that it is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake to global private equity investors including Apollo Global Management and Carlyle to raise up to Rs. 7,540 crore (US$ 1 billion) over the next 2-3 months.
• In October 2021, British satellite operator Inmarsat Holdings Ltd. announced that it is the first foreign operator to get India’s approval to sell high-speed broadband to planes and shipping vessels. Inmarsat will access the market via Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) after BSNL received a license from the Department of Telecommunications.
• In October 2021, Dixon Technologies announced plans to invest Rs. 200 crore (US$ 26.69 million) under the telecom PLI scheme; this investment included the acquisition cost of Bharti Group’s manufacturing unit.
• In September 2021, Bharti Airtel announced an investment of Rs. 50 billion (US$ 673 million) in expanding its data centre business to meet the customer demand in and around India.
• In August 2021, Tata Group company Nelco announced that the company is in talks with Canadian firm Telesat to sign a commercial pact for launching fast satellite broadband services in India under the latter’s Lightspeed brand, a move which will pit the combined entity against Bharti Enterprises-backed OneWeb, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon.
• In March 2021, Vodafone Idea Ltd. (VIL) announced that the acquired spectrum in five circles would help improve 4G coverage and bandwidth, allowing it to offer ‘superior digital experience’ to customers.
• In March 2021, Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) and Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) signed a deal to boost adoption of ATSC standards in India in order to make broadcast services available on mobile devices. This allows the TSDSI to follow ATSC standards, fostering global digital broadcasting standard harmonisation.
• In the first quarter of FY21, customer spending on telecom services increased 16.6% YoY, with over three-fourths spent on data services. This spike in consumer spending came despite of the COVID-19 disruption and lack of access of offline recharges for a few weeks.