India’s 5G subscriber base has reportedly grown to around 250 million since commercial 5G services were launched almost two and a half years ago, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Communications.
Earlier this month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said there were 898.57 million mobile broadband subscribers in India at the end of 2024. TRAI doesn’t break out its figures by network generation, but the ministry’s figure suggests 5G users now account for around 27.8% of mobile broadband subscribers.
According to a report from ETTelecom on Friday, the ministry also said in a statement that telcos have deployed 469,000 5G base stations in all states and union territories across the country of February 28, 2025, with 99.6% availability in all districts.
The ministry added that the 5G deployments exceed their minimum rollout obligations.
Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel launched commercial 5G services in October 2022, and completed their initial nationwide rollouts in early 2024. Vodafone Idea launched its 5G network in Mumbai last week.
The ministry statement was issued a day after Nokia released its latest Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) 2025 report, which forecasts 5G subscriptions in India to grow to 770 million by 2028, although that projection also assumed 290 million 5G users by the end of 2024, which is 40 million higher than the ministry’s numbers.
Nokia also said 5G users generated 7.7 exabytes of data traffic per month, compared to 13.3 exabytes from 4G users. Nokia expects 5G traffic to outpace 4G by the first quarter of next year.
