SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 9 of 97

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

What is the position of India in the world’s telecommunication market, as of March 2024?

(a)Fourth
(b)Second
(c)Third
(d)First

Answer

Why

Correct — B. India is the world's second-largest telecommunications market measured by subscriber base, behind China — the position it held in March 2024 and has held for years.

The scale is mobile: India's total telephone subscriber base runs past a billion connections, nearly all of them wireless. The regulator that publishes those counts, and the source such questions rest on, is TRAI. That makes option (b) the answer.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Fourth — Fourth understates it heavily. No market other than China's carries more telecom subscribers than India's.
(c)
Third — Third is the near-miss trap. The gap between India's subscriber base and the third-placed market is very wide, and the ranking has not changed hands in recent years.
(d)
First — First belongs to China, whose subscriber base is larger than India's. India is the runner-up on this measure, not the leader.

Concept

Rankings of this kind are by subscriber base, not by revenue. On revenue India ranks far lower, because average revenue per user is low — the same cheap tariffs that grew the subscriber count in the first place.

TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, publishes the monthly and annual subscriber and tele-density figures these questions are drawn from.

Tele-density means telephone connections per 100 people, and it is the second number TRAI reports alongside the subscriber total.

The stem dates itself to March 2024, but India's second place on subscribers is a settled fact rather than a figure that flips year to year — so the date is a reading instruction, not a hint that the answer is unusual.

Key facts

India is the world's second-largest telecommunications market by subscriber base, after China.
TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, publishes the subscriber and tele-density data used in these questions.
Tele-density is the number of telephone connections per 100 people.

Study next

TRAI's functions and the role of the Department of TelecommunicationsUrban and rural tele-density and what the gap measuresIndia's 5G rollout and how spectrum is auctioned

Common traps

Ranking by revenue instead of by subscribers. India's revenue rank is much lower than its subscriber rank.
Assuming a dated statistic must have moved since. The 'as of March 2024' rider fixes the answer to that date.

SSC likes a dated ranking, and the date in the stem is the signal that the number is meant to be pinned.

Comparable dated-ranking items appear on 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.25 (Sri Lanka's Human Development Index rank for 2022) and on 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.20 (biosphere reserves in India as of June 2021).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.