With a 97 per cent fall in the price of data over the past 11 years, India is set to become the data capital of the world in the next five years, Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Thursday. India is already the second-largest mobile market globally, with 1.2 billion users and 974 million internet users, of whom 940 million are broadband users, he said.

With 1 GB of data now costing ₹9 on average—down from ₹287 in 2014—the cost of communication has fallen by 97 per cent, Scindia said. India’s per GB data cost is only one-fifth of the global average, he added.  India is also among the only five countries in the world to develop an indigenous 4G telecom stack. BSNL has installed close to 94,000 4G telecom towers.