Smartphone Users in India to consume 11GB data per month by 2022: Ericsson Mobility Report

The data traffic for every smartphone user in India will touch 11GB per month, by 2022

Smartphones are getting popular day by day and India has been bringing a lot of users to this world of network and technology. More and more people are getting connected and usage of the internet is increasing. The overall mobile subscriber base in India is likely to grow to 1.4 billion by 2022 and nearly one-third of them will be 4G users, says a report by Ericsson Mobility. China followed India with an addition of over 24 million mobile subscribers during the three-month period. India’s total mobile subscriber base is expected to grow to over 1.4 billion in the next five years of which 520 million will be 4G subscribers, the report said. India led the mobile subscriber’s growth globally with the highest net addition of over 43 million customers in January- March 2017, it said. The 5G service is expected to be operational in India by 2022 with a subscriber base of around 3 million, it added. “Based on the trend of deployment of LTE by telecom operators in India, we feel 3G will be the dominant technology in 2022,” Ericsson India, Head of Network Products, Nitin Bansal said.

The “Ericsson Mobility Report 2017” also states that the total mobile data traffic in India is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 40%, reaching approximately eight exabytes of data per month compared to around one exabyte of data consumption by the end of 2016. By 2022, 97% of mobile data traffic will be through smartphones.

VoLTE

VoLTE subscriptions are estimated to reach 4.6 billion by the end of 2022. By this time, the VoLTE subscriber base in India is fixed at 370 million. “VoLTE represents a great opportunity for telecom operators in India who are looking to route voice calls over 4G LTE networks enabling lower cost per minute for voice calls as well as free up legacy spectrum bands for re-farming,” said Bansal.

Network Technology

GSM remained the dominant technology in 2016, accounting for over 70% of total mobile subscriptions. LTE and WCDMA/HSPA technologies together are expected to represent 85% of all Indian subscriptions by 2022 while 5G subscriptions are forecasted to become available only in 2022 — representing at least 0.2% of total mobile subscriptions reaching three million.