A report by Mumbai-headquartered global analytical company CRISIL says that mobile data consumption in India grew 24 times in last five years, and is set to grow four-fold in the next five years through fiscal 2022, with data subscribers expected to double beyond 900 million and penetration reaching 80% from 40% at present.
Other key takeaways reported by Telecomtalk.info
- Faster penetration will be supported by a continued drop in tariffs
- Telcos will need to focus on increasing per-subscriber usage to bolster incremental revenues
- The per subscriber usage will reach 2.3 GB per user by 2022
- Rapid expansion in Wi-Fi infrastructure will cause a shift in data traffic to fixed lines after fiscal 2022
- Videos contribute nearly 80% to total data traffic (direct and indirect) in India
- Video viewership is dominated by regional languages – nearly 60% in Hindi and nearly 35% in other regional languages
- Time spent on mobiles by Indians is already in line with evolved markets
The report added that India lacks in Wi-Fi hotspots, which is reflected in the time spent on surfing internet over Wi-Fi being a low 18% compared with 50% in the U.S. It suggested that “India needs to catch up significantly with close to 35,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.”
