India, one of the largest telecom markets in the world in terms of population, has witnessed a quick expansion of 5G networks. The companies including Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have contributed almost all of the developments with respect to 5G in the country. Of course, their technology partners including Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung have also played a key role. Now, as the 5G subscriptions are slowly rising, the telecom secretary, Neeraj Mittal has predicted when India will reach a total of a billion 5G subscriptions.
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India's Billion 5G Subscriptions to Come by the End of This Decade
According to an ET report, Neeraj Mittal said that India will likely have a billion 5G subscriptions by 2030. Mittal was speaking at the ET Telecom 5G Summit.
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He said, "Over 99.6% of the Indian districts are covered, and 23% of the mobile subscribers are enabled. This is expected to reach about 1 billion by 2030 which will represent about 74% of the mobile subscriptions in India."
In the recent MBiT report for 2025, Nokia said that India will reach over 770 million 5G subscriptions by the end of 2027. Thus, the prediction from Neeraj Mittal is almost in line with the predictions of Nokia. The next wave of 5G growth will come from the other two telcos in India including Vodafone Idea (Vi) and BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited).