India Expected To Achieve 62% 5G Adoption By 2030

New Delhi: According to a GSMA report published on Tuesday, India is set to achieve 62% 5G adoption by 2030, which is considerably higher than the 50% average across the Asia Pacific region. The report identifies India, alongside Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan, as leading nations where regulatory modernization is crucial for driving digital economy growth and promoting sustainable mobile industry practices.

India's connectivity challenge is evolving from mere coverage to actual usage and adoption, as the South Asia coverage gap has dropped from around 30% to less than 5%. Despite this progress, affordability, device access, digital skills, perceived value, trust, and online safety remain significant barriers to mobile internet adoption in the country.

Mobile technologies and services are projected to contribute $1.4 trillion to the Asia Pacific economy by 2030, a 40% increase from the current $1 trillion. The subsequent stage of digital growth will be influenced by four key factors converging: the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), the decline in digital trust, the need for more resilient digital infrastructure, and increased interest in digital sovereignty.

The report emphasizes India's efforts to tackle these challenges through initiatives like BharatNet and PMGDISHA, with PMGDISHA having trained over 64 million rural citizens in essential digital skills. Digital trust is becoming an economic priority for India, with information-security spending projected to grow at an 11.7% CAGR in 2026, reflecting the rising demand for cybersecurity, identity, privacy, and other trust-enhancing services.

India's Digital Personal Data Protection Rules are contributing to the development of trusted environments for storing, processing, and managing sensitive data, alongside growing interest in sovereign cloud environments for local, verifiable, and secure AI workloads. The firm also highlights the connection between network resilience and technology resilience, with India's Atma Nirbhar Bharat Approach and BSNL's deployment of an indigenously developed 4G stack that can be technically upgraded to 5G.

Moreover, India is among the countries that have outlined a 6G spectrum roadmap, underscoring its long-term approach to connectivity and spectrum planning. The report suggests that 5G, AI, and IoT will bring substantial productivity gains across the Asia Pacific, with manufacturing and services sectors, which together account for more than half of the economic benefits generated by advanced mobile technologies.