New Delhi: India has emerged as the world’s second-largest 5G market, trailing only China, and is now among the fastest adopters of the technology globally, according to Union Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia.
“With over 400M+ 5G users, India today stands as the world’s second-largest 5G subscriber base and among the fastest adopters globally,” Scindia said in a post on X, highlighting how the country is setting global benchmarks in scale, speed, and digital transformation.
Since the launch of 5G services in 2022, coverage has expanded nationwide, reaching 99.6 percent of districts and covering 85 percent of the population. As of March 2025, telecom operators had installed 469,000 5G Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) across the country, making India’s rollout one of the fastest in the world, according to Ministry of Communications data released in December 2025.
The ministry said that around 250 million mobile users have already migrated to 5G services since launch. It also highlighted strong growth in rural connectivity, with rural telephone connections rising 42.9 percent—nearly double the urban increase—from 377.78 million in March 2014 to 539.83 million in September 2025.
India’s total internet connections have crossed 1 billion, reaching 1.0029 billion, up from 251.5 million in March 2014, marking growth of nearly 299 percent.
Aligned with the Atmanirbhar Bharat vision, the rollout of home-grown network infrastructure has accelerated. India has become only the fifth country globally to develop its own 4G stack, fully upgradable to 5G, reinforcing its push for technological self-sufficiency.
“While it took decades to develop such technology elsewhere, India achieved this in just two years,” the ministry said, adding that significant progress is also being made in indigenous 6G research under the Bharat 6G Mission.
