Internet penetration in India grows over 300%

Bhubaneswar/Mumbai: Five years ago, on this day Reliance Jio commercially launched its pan India telecom service. This marked the beginning of a new era of 4G mobile network and data revolution.

The affordable high-speed data pushed internet penetration in the country by 312% from 192.30 million broadband subscribers in September 2016 to 792.78 million broadband subscribers in June 2021, as per the latest telecom subscriber data published by TRAI. This led to an exponential increase in data consumption with monthly data consumption per user witnessing over 1303% jump from 878.63 MB to a whooping 12.33 GB between December 2016 to March 2021, reveals the latest quarterly telecom performance indicator report published by TRAI last week. Similarly, the free voice call trend led to over 164% increase in voice consumption per user per month from 310 minutes to 818 minutes. 

Since the beginning of commercial operation of Jio in September,2016, affordable internet became a reality with internet data cost coming down by over 93% from around Rs160/per GB to Rs.10.77/per GB as per performance indicators reports of TRAI.

Apart from these, the digital revolution fuelled by Jio immensely helped the growth of social media as well as OTT platforms far and wide across the country. As a boost to the start-up ecosystem, the total number of unicorns in the country increased by 430% from 10 in 2016 to 53 as of June 2021 and also created new employment opportunities for millions of youths in all sectors. Presently, Jio has become the No. 1 digital service provider with the highest 43.67 crore mobile subscribers in the country

Coming to the impact of these five years of digital revolution in Odisha, it propelled internet penetration, especially in rural hinterlands across the state. As per TRAI’s performance indicators reports, rural broadband internet user base in Odisha increased from just 8.7 lakhs in September 2016 to over 1.3 crores in March 2021. The total broadband internet user base in the state increased from 41.4 lakhs in September 2016 to over 2.05 crores in March 2021.

Presently, Jio is the No. 1 digital service provider both in Odisha as well as the country with highest number of subscribers and highest revenue market share of the sector. As per the latest telecom subscriber data released by TRAI, Reliance Jio leads the sector in Odisha with nearly 1.5 crore subscribers followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.1 crore subscribers, BSNL with 64.2 lakh subscribers and Vodafone Idea with 24.89 lakh subscribers in the state as on June 30, 2021. Jio also has the highest 4G network footprint in Odisha with highest number of 4G towers in the state.