According to the Ericsson Mobility Report 2019, the India region (also covering Nepal and Bhutan) is rising due to increased numbers of LTE (long-term evolution or 4G) subscriptions, attractive data plans, and the younger generations’ changing video viewing habits.
Other salient features of the report:
- The total mobile data traffic per month in India is expected to increase at a 23 percent CAGR from 4.6 exabytes (EB) in 2018 to 16 EB by 2024.
- The total smartphone subscriptions in the region will reach 1.1 billion by 2024 growing at 11 percent CAGR.
- The total mobile broadband subscriptions in India are expected to grow at CAGR of 13 percent from 610 million in 2018 to 1.25 billion in 2024. (Mobile broadband technologies already make up more than 50 percent of subscriptions.)
- Mobile video traffic is fueling the total data traffic as users are spending more time streaming and sharing video.
- LTE subscriptions in India are expected to grow at a CAGR of 17 percent from 450 million in 2018 to 1.16 billion in 2024.
- Video will continue to drive data usage and we see monthly data usage per smartphone increasing from 9.8 GB in 2018 to 18 GB by 2024 growing at 11 percent CAGR.
“LTE will remain the most dominant access technology in the region up to 2024 even as 5G subscriptions are expected to grow during this period. Based on the latest Consumer Lab study done by Ericsson, we have found that Indian smartphone users are willing to pay more than 66 percent premium for 5G services. In fact, more than half of smartphone users in India expect their own provider to switch to 5G or will wait a maximum of six months before moving to another provider that does,” said Nitin Bansal, head of Ericsson India and head of network solutions, South East Asia, Oceania and India.
