Indian mobile data to grow 13-fold between 2014 to 2019; at double the growth rate of fixed IP: Cisco

We all heard mobile was the next big thing in the internet world. But we probably didn’t realise the implication of the growth surge we’re about to witness in the connected world and Indian mobile data. According to the forecast by Cisco, “In India, mobile data traffic will grow 13-fold from 2014 to 2019, a compound annual growth rate of 67%.” The emergence of 3G and 4G LTE services would play a vital role in the growth of data consumption over the next 5 years. In fact, the report goes on to add some interesting analogies of the extent of growth of mobile data traffic in India. It adds, “Mobile data traffic will reach 1.1 Exabytes per month by 2019 (the equivalent of 285 million DVDs each month), up from 87.9 Petabytes per month in 2014.” Although all of it sounds impressive, the key highlight is that Indian mobile data traffic will “grow 2 times faster than Indian fixed IP traffic” from 2014 to 2019. It all makes sense when you compare the rate of growth of PC and smartphone/tablets. If the forecast for 2019 is compared to the data from 2009, the growth is equivalent to “3163 times the volume of Indian mobile traffic in 2009”. What’s hopeful from the report is that 51% of mobile connections will be ‘smart’ connections by 2019, an increase of 8% from 2014. That’s a reaffirmation of the growth in smartphones over the next 5 years. The report adds, “89% of mobile data traffic will be ‘smart’ traffic by 2019, up from 43% in 2014.” Here’s another interesting highlight of the report, “The average mobile traffic per mobile-connected end-user device will reach 976 MB per month by 2019, up from 96 MB per month in 2014, a CAGR of 59%. Mobile traffic per user will reach 1,262 MB per month by 2019, up from 149 MB per month in 2014, a CAGR of 59%.” The overall growth is at 59% but the increased data per user indicates multiple connections per user. This indicates the multi-device nature of the connected user over the next 5 years. The per capita mobile traffic will reach 852 MB per month by 2019, up from 69 MB per month in 2014, a CAGR of 65%.