India to Have over 500,000 Mobile Towers by 2020: Deloitte

With increasing uptake of mobile Internet, the installed base of mobile towers will go up by over 100,000 by 2020, according to a report by Deloitte India.

At present there are 4,00,000 mobile towers in India. These are expected to grow at 3 per cent CAGR over the next five years. In the year 2020 the total number of towers is expected to grow to more than 5,11,000. Out of these 30,000 towers will be supporting only data sites, the report said. 

Mobile towers in India are likely to grow to over five lakh by 2020 from about four lakh at present due to increase in demand of wireless internet services, a study said today. 

”Towers are expected to grow at 3 per cent CAGR for next five years and the total number of towers is expected to grow to more than 511,000 by financial year 2020, of which 30,000 towers are expected to be only supporting data sites,” Deloitte India report said. 

The report Indian Tower Industry: The Future is Data estimates that there are about four lakh mobile towers which inlcude only 700 standalone 3G and 4G towers.

The report also
 projects overall site tenancies (including 2G, 3G & 4G ) to grow to approximately 12.68 lakh by 2020. 

A total of 44 per cent of the mobile traffic is expected to be off-loaded to wi-fi and small cells by 2020. Small cells will contribute to 7 per cent of off-loaded data traffic in the most likely scenario, the report said.