Internet speeds - broadband as well as mobile - will triple in India in four years, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Forecast and Service Adoption for 2013 to 2018.
The report, which studied trends related to global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic, said average broadband speeds will rise from 3Mbps in 2013 to 9Mbps in 2018. By then, the report claimed, that mobile Internet speed would reach 1.6Mbps on an average.
Cisco's report claims that the average Internet user in India will generate around 4.7GB of traffic per month in 2018, an increase of 117 percent from 2013. The findings say an eight-fold increase in video traffic by 2018 could be one of the reasons behind the rising IP traffic. The report also claims that IP video traffic would account for three-quarters of all IP traffic by 2018.
Watching videos on the Internet seems to be a popular activity in India, claims the report. The report notes, "In India, 70 billion minutes of video content will cross the Internet each month in 2018. That's more than 26,600 minutes of video streamed or downloaded every second. Internet video traffic will grow nine-fold from 2013 to 2018."
With rising Internet speeds, the report says, IP traffic will rise too. "In India, Internet traffic will grow five-fold from 2013 to 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 41 percent and reach 101 petabytes per day in 2018, up from 20 petabytes per day in 2013. Indian Internet traffic in 2018 will be equivalent to 160 times the volume of all traffic across the entire Internet in India in 2005," the report reads.
As is obvious, a spurt in the number of networked devices in the country is expected. The report claims that there will be 1.5 billion networked devices in 2018 - a 50 percent growth when compared to that number in 2013.
An interesting detail is that Cisco expects non-PC traffic to grow to 65 percent by 2018. "In India, mobile data traffic will grow 24-fold from 2013 to 2018 and reach 1.2 exabytes per month in 2018, up from 52 petabytes per month in 2013. Overall, mobile data traffic in 2018 will be equivalent to 55 times the volume of the entire Indian Internet in 2005," the report says.