India's Monthly Data Consumption on Telecom Networks Jumps 2.2 Times to 359PB in 6 Months: Nokia Study

Data usage on the network of telecom operators, excluding Reliance Jio, doubled in six months to 359 petabytes or about 37 lakh gigabyte per month at the end of June, as per an extended Nokia Mbit report. As per the infographic in the report, data usage on the network of India telecom operators was 165PB in December.

"We have seen significant jump in data growth. Data consumption of network of Indian telecom operators jumped 2.2 times in six months. Therefore, we have come up with extension of the Nokia Mbit report," Nokia Head of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Amit Marwah told PTI. The study does not contain statistics of Reliance Jio network, he said.

The report said that 4G will become dominant technology in 2018. Though there has been no change in usage of 3G data in the total pie at 55 percent, the 4G data usage increased from 3 percent of the total data consumed in the country in June 2015 to 34 percent in June 2017.

"The data is based on traffic flow measurement on Nokia Network in the country which has been extrapolated to whole of the country. The sample size of about 350 million subscribers and one-third of them use mobile broadband," Marwah said.

According to the study, 3G device penetration reached 40 percent level in the country, with robust growth in 4G mobile devices. As many as 18 percent of active devices connected to the surveyed network are VoLTE enabled, the survey said.

VoLTE (Voice over Long-Term Evolution) is the high-end and latest version of calls that are made on Internet-based 4G networks.

At present, Reliance Jio offers entire phone call service using VoLTE technology. Airtel has just started VoLTE-based calls and plans to expand it to across India by the end of the current fiscal.