In a pitch for policy change in India, the GSM Association has said that for the nearly 900 million mobile connections in India, there are only 350 million subscribers. Some data points from the report, which you can download here, even though we don't find their data reliable: - GDP: The Mobile ecosystem generates approx 5.3 per cent of GDP for India. By 2020, it will contribute $400 billion to India's GDP, and invest $9 billion in Infrastructure, and $34 billion to public funding. - Employment: The Mobile ecosystem supports 730,000 jobs directly and 2 million jobs indirectly. By 2020, it will create 4.1 million additional jobs. - 3G and 4G adoption is projected to increase by 31 per cent - from 107 million 3G and 4G connections in 2013 to 409 million connections in 2017. A few issues with the data points provided here: - 3G and 4G connections: Based on the results announced last quarter (end of June 2013), Airtel (6.8M), RCOM (7.7M), Idea Cellular (5.5M), Vodafone (3.7M) have a combined 23.7 million 3G subscribers. These operators accounted for 76.65% of India's active subscriber base, and assuming that they accounted for the same percentage of 3G connections, this suggests that India has around 30.92 million 3G customers. Even assuming that this base triples by the end of the year only gives you 92.76 million 3G connections. Our calculation doesn't take into account 4G connections, which the report says were 400,000 in 2012. That is inconsequential, still. We don't…
