India’s 5G Adoption to Reach 62% by 2030, Ahead of Asia-Pacific Average: GSMA

India is projected to reach 62 per cent 5G adoption by 2030, significantly ahead of the Asia Pacific average of 50 per cent, a report said on Tuesday. The report from GSMA said India is identified as one of the region’s 'Leading Nations', alongside Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, where regulatory modernisation is important to accelerating digital‑economy growth and supporting mobile‑industry sustainability. India's connectivity challenge is increasingly shifting from coverage to usage and adoption as the South Asia coverage gap has fallen from around 30 per cent to less than 5 per cent.

It has made affordability, device access, digital skills, perceived value, trust and online safety the main barriers to mobile internet adoption. Mobile technologies and services are projected to contribute $1.4 trillion to the Asia Pacific economy by 2030, a 40 per cent increase from the $1 trillion generated today. The next phase of digital growth will be shaped by how governments, operators and technology providers respond to four converging priorities: the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), declining digital trust, demand for more resilient digital infrastructure, and growing interest in digital sovereignty.

The report highlighted BharatNet and PMGDISHA as examples of India’s efforts to address these challenges, with PMGDISHA having trained more than 64 million rural citizens in foundational digital skills. Digital trust is emerging as an economic priority for India, with information-security spending expected to grow 11.7 per cent in 2026, reflecting increasing demand for cybersecurity, identity, privacy and other trust-enabling services. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Rules are contributing to the broader shift towards trusted environments for storing, processing and governing sensitive data, alongside growing interest in sovereign cloud environments for local, auditable and secure AI workloads, the report noted.

The firm also linked network resilience with technology resilience, highlighting India’s Atma Nirbhar Bharat Approach and BSNL’s deployment of an indigenously developed 4G stack that is technically upgradeable to 5G. India is also among the countries that have published a 6G spectrum roadmap, reflecting its longer-term approach to connectivity and spectrum planning. The report mentioned that 5G, AI and IoT will deliver significant productivity gains across Asia Pacific, particularly in manufacturing and services, which together are expected to account for more than half of the economic benefits generated by advanced mobile technologies.

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