New Delhi: Mobile broadband subscriptions in India increased at an annual growth rate of over 40 per cent during the last seven years showing that the country has raced past its G-20 peers on digital innovation, according to a report on the state of digital economy in the country, which also highlights the weakness of India’s digital eco-system and rural urban divide in internet usage and smartphone penetration.
Wireless internet, mobile broadband- With rapid growth in mobile broadband subscriptions in the last decade, India is now the second-largest telecommunications market in the world with a subscriber base of over 1.17 billion. In the last 7 years, wireless internet subscriptions in the country have more than tripled from 248 million in 2014 to over 820 million in September 2022. And mobile broadband subscriptions could hit the mark of one billion users in the next 2-3 years.
Global contribution- India is not just the second largest mobile broadband market, but also the fastest growing one. Between 2014 and 2021, India registered an annual growth rate of 41 per cent, which implies that 3 out of 5 new customers in the global mobile broadband market came from India, the report said.
3G penetration- According to the State of India’s Digital Economy report 2023, which was released by UIDAI CEO Subhash Garg on Friday, 99% Indians have 3G mobile broadband coverage but not all of them are using it. The primary reason for low penetration of 3G mobile usage is attributed to rural-urban divide or the digital divide between India and Bharat.
Digital divide- The report, which is jointly prepared by the ICRIER and Prosus, while the population in rural India is twice as much as that in urban areas, the number of active internet users is about half. Moreover, according to the report, the exclusion of rural women from India’s digital revolution is much more acute as less than a third of the women in rural India use the internet.
“Despite the second largest population of digitally-connected people, India still has unacceptably high digital divides across geography, gender and income,” the report said. Moreover, India lags in subscription of fixed line broadband users as 97 per cent of all broadband subscribers turned out to be mobile internet subscribers.
Disparities in tech adoption in public sector- While appreciating the creation of a robust digital public infrastructure in the country which is based on Aadhaar, UPI and Mobile Numbers, the report also highlighted the weakness in adoption of technology in different sectors in the government.
For example, as nearly 97% of the total police stations in the country are now connected to the internet, the same is true for less than a quarter of government schools and just over half of government-aided schools. According to the report, the weakest link in India’s digital transition is the need for protection of its digital infrastructure which requires constant assessment of the susceptibility to cybercrime and privacy breaches and requires urgent policy attention.
Aadhaar based e-KYC saves huge money- Aadhaar has led to an overall savings of Rs 2 lakh crore to the Government of India and has brought down costs of verification through e-KYC, leading to savings in costs for customer acquisition from Rs 500 to Rs 700 per person to just Rs 3 per person.
