India’s telecoms history has been and is one of massive opportunity and investment, whose practical impact deserves and has the potential to be enhanced by identifying and removing bureaucratic frictions.

In a survey conducted in 2025, Indian mobile operators and their partners were asked to name their primary barriers to rapid deployment of network infrastructure. The top three were ‘budget constraints’, ‘outdated or over-complex regulation’, and ‘regional inconsistency in regulations’. These concerns are echoed in the small cell sector, where ambitious plans for densification can often be thwarted or delayed by challenges in the regulatory and policy environment.

To drive awareness of the benefits of small cells among policy makers, with a view to lowering barriers to deployment, SCF has produced a document entitled ‘Small Cells for the Indian Mobile Market: a Towerless Telecom technology’. This clearly sets out the socio-economic benefits that regulators and policy teams can help to drive if they agree on key shared goals and roadmaps, and provides recommendations, based on best practice in selected global markets.

Small Cell Forum regards India as one of the markets with the biggest requirement for densification, and the greatest opportunity for very large-scale roll-out. There has already been considerable activity by the major MNOs. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have achieved two of the largest and fastest 5G roll-outs in the world. In just three years they have built out almost two million 5G cells and India now have 400m 5G subscribers. Clearly, the next steps are to expand rural coverage and urban densification, as well as indoor penetration.

These efforts are heavily reliant on small cells, but SCF perceives a misalignment between the ambitions of the operators to densify their 4G/5G networks, and the approach of some regional and national regulatory authorities. India has a huge geography and complex government structure, and lawmakers and policy teams need to address the requirements of network densification across local, state, regional and national domains.

There also needs to be some common understanding between multiple departments – urban planning, site licensing, backhaul access and network sharing are four topics that, in the survey of Indian operators, were highlighted as key issues for regulators. All of these involve different departments, or combinations of departments, which may have different perspectives on how to facilitate small cells.

For instance, one of the biggest barriers to outdoor densification is that right of way rules are complex and implementation bureaucratic. Progress has been made. The Indian national telecoms regulatory, TRAI, is very aware of the benefits of small cells and in 2022, central government amended RoW rules to facilitate these deployments, but operators report that implementation of the new rules is very inconsistent across different locations, and this not only slows down roll-out, but limits economies of scale for deployers, since they have to devise a different plan for each state, region or even city.

Other complaints include fragmented approval processes for sites, which may be owned by local authorities, transport operators, utilities and so on; as well as high or inconsistent fees for access to these sites and for fiber backhaul. A national rule limiting site approval processes to 15-30 days are not widely respected, according to operators.

Other remedies suggested by TRAI – such as increased sharing of infrastructure among small cell deployers, or exemption for low-power cells from many approval processes – are either still under discussion or are sparsely implemented.

SCF believes that central government policy is heading in the right direction for small cells, supported by the commitment of the large MNOs and many telecoms infrastructure stakeholders. It also believes that the many authorities and policy makers that are involved in this huge country’s complex telecoms value chain will recognise the need to simplify and enforce a new regulatory framework, if the benefits of densification are clearly set out, with real-world examples from other markets where many of the same challenges, especially related to sites and permissions, have existed, but have been addressed.

There is plenty at stake, as the new document makes clear. According to SCF’s most recent market status report and forecast, the Indian sub-continent has the potential to deploy the largest number of small cells in the world by the end of this decade, because of the scale of demand for high-quality connectivity as part of broader social and economic growth. The forecast predicts that about 3.5 million small cells (indoor and outdoor) will be deployed, cumulatively, between 2023 and 2030.

However, the forecast also examines the barriers that could reduce deployment, offering a best case and worst case scenario, based on the speed and effectiveness with which operator challenges are addressed. In the global forecast, the best case is 9% higher than the base case, and the worst case is 5% lower, in terms of cumulative units deployed in 2023-2030.

For India, the variations are 15% and 11%, providing a range of 3.1m units (worst case by 2030) and over 4m units (best case). That adds up to almost one million cells that will only be deployed if the challenges facing operators and their infracos and investors are addressed in the next 1-2 years. As stated above, many of these challenges, according to the key stakeholders, relate to regulation and bureaucracy.

As such, SCF believes its document is being published at a vital time to help educate and inform the teams which have the power to unleash full densification in India, and the many benefits that will bring for consumers, businesses, governments and for the Indian operators and vendor ecosystems.

You can download the guide here.