According to Deloitte India, standalone data towers are expected to grow at about 125 per cent per annum till 2020 on the back of surging data usage, which is poised to benefit the telecom tower industry.

The consulting firm predicts that the telecom tower base is expected to grow at three per cent compounded annually for the next five years and the total number of towers is expected to grow to more than 511,000 by 2020, of which 30,000 towers are expected to support only data sites.

A total of 44 per cent of the mobile traffic is expected to be offloaded to Wi-Fi and small cells network by 2020, where in small cells will contribute to 7 per cent of offloaded data traffic in the most likely scenario.

According to Deloitte, the tower industry tenancy ratio is expected to grow from 1.77 in 2015 to 2.48 in 2020, primarily due to the focus on data services. Overall site tenancies (2G, 3G & 4G all inclusive) are expected to increase to approximately 1,268,000 by 2020.