Can India transform its teledensity challenge into 6G dominance?

By Manoj Kumar Singh

In the shadow of the Himalayas, a technological giant stirs. While global powers vie for 6G supremacy with established infrastructures and saturated markets, India is playing an entirely different game—one in which its greatest weakness might become its most powerful advantage.

Picture this: In India’s gleaming urban centres, wireless teledensity soars at a staggering 125.02%, with citizens wielding multiple devices in an always-connected ecosystem. Meanwhile, just hours away in rural villages, connectivity plummets to 58.07%. This is not just a statistic. It reflects that 500 million people are standing at the threshold of digital transformation.

This stark urban-rural chasm represents both India’s most formidable challenge and its most extraordinary opportunity in the race for 6G dominance.

“The nations leading the 6G race today are building on fully saturated markets,” the latest update from the Ministry of Communications indicates. “India, with its 1.46 billion citizens, is building something entirely different—a technological future where connectivity is not merely getting upgraded, it is being reimagined from the ground up.”

From Laggard to Leapfrog

While China, Norway, South Korea, and Switzerland refine technologies for populations already swimming in connectivity, India has laid out an audacious vision: commercial 6G deployment by 2030 for the world’s second-largest telecommunications market.

This is not just ambition; it is strategy. The Bharat 6G Vision Document, unveiled in March 2023, positions India not as a follower but as an architect of the global 6G framework. By focusing on ‘Ubiquitous Connectivity’—a concept India successfully advocated for inclusion in the International Telecommunication Union’s IMT 2030 framework—the nation is turning its connectivity gaps into blueprints for innovation.

Weaving India’s Digital Fabric

BharatNet, one of the world’s most ambitious rural connectivity projects, is at the heart of this transformation. By March 2025, this mammoth initiative had made 218,347 Gram Panchayats service-ready, laid 42.13 lakh route km (enough to circle the Earth nth times), and installed over 104,574 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country.

The recently approved Amended BharatNet Program 2023 takes this vision further with its Rs 1,39,579 crore investment in creating ring topology connectivity. This self-healing network architecture ensures continuity even when individual connections fail. This is not just infrastructure; it is the nervous system for India’s technological metamorphosis.

The 100-Lab Gambit

While other nations pour resources into corporate R&D, India has made an unprecedented move: establishing 100 new 5G labs across academic institutions in a single financial year (2023-24). This distributed innovation approach democratises 6G development, creating incubators for breakthrough technologies across the nation’s diverse geography. “These are not just laboratories; they are crucibles where India’s technological sovereignty in 6G will be forged,” states the Bharat 6G Alliance, a unique collaboration uniting industries, academic institutions, and research bodies.

The government has simultaneously approved 111 research proposals specifically targeting 6G ecosystem development—a coordinated research thrust that leverages India’s deep pool of engineering talent.

Besides, two specialised testbeds—the 6G THz Testbed and the Advanced Optical Communication Testbed—are now operational, providing controlled environments where theoretical concepts meet practical implementation. These facilities serve as acceleration chambers for technologies that must eventually serve vastly different deployment environments—from Mumbai’s urban canyons to remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Scale Factor

January 2025 data reveals India’s true competitive advantage: scale. With wireless subscribers reaching 1.157 billion and broadband users hitting 945.16 million, India possesses an unmatched testing ground for emerging technologies.

This massive user base generates exponentially more usage scenarios, edge cases, and implementation challenges than smaller markets can ever produce. Solutions that work across India’s diverse deployment conditions solve local problems and create technologies robust enough for global applications.

The Mobile Miracle

While fibre forms the backbone, mobile connectivity reaches where cables cannot. 5G services have been rolled out across all states and union territories in India, including Lakshadweep, and are currently available in 773 out of 776 districts. As of March 2025, India has installed approximately 4.74 lakh 5G Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), contributing to 30.02 lakh BTS across all technologies.

Additionally, the country is supported by a robust network of 8.24 lakh telecom towers, enabling widespread digital connectivity. By December 2024, approximately 625,853 villages had mobile coverage, with 618,968 villages already equipped with 4G.

Complemented by rising broadband speeds, this mobile infrastructure creates the ideal foundation for 6G deployment—a technology that will seamlessly integrate fixed and wireless communications.

India’s Global 6G Gambit

India’s 6G ambitions extend beyond its borders. The inaugural International 6G Symposium, hosted alongside the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly and India Mobile Congress 2024, positioned the country as a convener of global expertise. Strategic MOUs with leading international 6G alliances ensure India’s innovations integrate seamlessly with global standards. By emphasising “coverage, interoperability, and sustainability” in international forums, India is ensuring that 6G will not only be faster but also fundamentally more inclusive.

On the other hand, nations currently leading telecom innovation face a paradoxical constraint: their own success. With nearly complete coverage and mature infrastructure, their 6G deployments will necessarily be evolutionary, constrained by backwards compatibility and the need to protect existing investments.

With significant portions of its territory still awaiting robust connectivity, India can be revolutionary in designing systems that optimise for emerging needs rather than legacy constraints.

From Challenge to Dominance

As wireless teledensity increases month-on-month, from 81.67% in December 2024 to 82.06% in January 2025, each percentage point represents millions more citizens joining the digital age. Each new connection strengthens India’s position in the race for 6G supremacy.

The question is no longer whether India can overcome its teledensity challenges, but whether these challenges will catapult India into technological leadership. As the world’s most populous nation builds toward 2030, it is not just closing a digital divide but turning that divide into the foundation for 6G dominance.

In this light, India’s connectivity gaps are not developmental failures but blank canvases where the future of global telecommunications may well be written.

The author is the Director General of the Digital Infrastructure Providers Association.