Indian telecom market likely to cross Rs 6.6-trillion revenue

"While voice business still contributes a large chunk towards operator revenues, data revenues have shown an exponential growth trajectory over the last few years," Sinha said at a workshop on Telecom India.

The Minister said that advancements in innovative Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, like health monitors, smart transport, smart meeers, among others, are projected to result in 21 per cent increase in machine-to-machine (M2M) services.

"These advances will result in a significant growth of mobile data, and as the telecom sector moves to newer technologies, TSPs (telecom service providers) will need to identify innovative avenues to monetise this data opportunity," he said.

Sinha added that Indian telecom market is expected to cross the Rs 6.6 trillion revenue mark by the year 2020.

He said mobile data traffic also grew by 76 per cent in India in 2016 primarily attributed to increased smart phone penetration.

This growing usage of smart phones, especially in urban areas, has increased the usage of internet on hand-held devices -- in 2016, 559 megabytes of mobile data was generated per month by an average smart phone, up from 430 megabytes per month in 2015, the Minister said.

Consumption of video content is also forecast to be 75 per cent of India's mobile data traffic by 2021, compared to 49 per cent in 2016, he added.