monitor the progress of Asia Pacific countries in achievingfurther room for improvement. This is especially true for their digitalisation goals. The index combines quantitative data and qualitative evaluations to measure performance, areas, which continue to face obstacles such as high costs and logistical challenges due to difficult terrain. fibre, falling significantly short of the government's target of 70% fibre coverage by 2024.18 Countries such as With an overall score of 52 out of 100, India has significant Malaysia (80%) are considerably ahead. Nevertheless, particularly in Innovation and Data Governance, where right-of-way (RoW) regulations, introduced in 2024 and scores were below 40. India exceeded the regional now being implemented consistently by India's states, average in four of the five components assessed, with its process, alleviating a major bottleneck in the deployment of fibre and other telecoms infrastructure. In addition to telecoms infrastructure, India requires significant investment in cloud infrastructure, particularly data centres, to meet growing demand for Al and other cloud services. India's data centre capacity is currently below 5 GW, compared to nearly 32 GW in China and 54 GW in the US.9 In August 2025, MeitY took steps to revive its national policy for data centres, with plans to replace remains a primary objective of Digital India. Considerable progress has been achieved, notably through investments with a single-window clearance system, and proposals by mobile operators in 4G and 5G infrastructure. Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio have deployed more than 460,000 outside major hubs. This development - alongside spectrum allocation in 2022.17 Meanwhile, Vodafone Idea localisation, the rollout of 5G and the increasing demand and BSNL have intensified their 5G deployment plans, with commercial services expected in 2025. "India eyes global leadership in 6G space", RCR Wireless, March 2025 'The Foundation of 5G: Fibre Deployment in India", Invenia, August 2025 "Mapped: Data Center Capacity Around the World", Visual Capitalist,June 2025
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