India telecommunications and digital economy expansion

India’s telecommunications and digital economy have seen significant expansion and infrastructure development. The nation has transitioned into one of the world’s most cost-effective digital markets, with data costs dropping from approximately Rs 287 per GB to Rs 9 per GB. This shift has supported a massive increase in broadband access, which grew from 6 crore people a decade ago to over 102 crore.

Digital infrastructure is bolstered by the Aadhaar identity system and the Jan Dhan account system, contributing to India accounting for 49 per cent of the world’s digital transactions, with 84 per cent occurring via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

As of August 2026, the wireless subscriber base reached 1.31 billion, following a monthly growth of 0.46 per cent according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data. Reliance Jio led this growth by adding approximately 2.4 million total connections, including roughly 1.86 million standard mobile customers when excluding Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections. This brought Jio’s total mobile base to approximately 508.4 million, a market share of about 41.7 per cent. In comparison, Bharti Airtel added about 500,000 subscribers.

The 5G rollout has achieved network capability in 99.9 per cent of districts. The 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) segment reached 13.45 million subscribers, with Jio reporting approximately 9.4 million users and Airtel reporting approximately 4 million. Performance testing in the Delhi area conducted in July 2026 showed Reliance Jio leading in mobile download speeds at 257.03 Mbps, while Bharti Airtel led in upload speeds at 24.83 Mbps. Vodafone Idea and MTNL trailed in download performance.