India Consumed 54,917 Million Gigabytes Of Data In 2019, And Data Consumption Will Only Grow

We know that India has a lot of smartphones, and with phone data getting cheaper, more and more people are consuming the internet. And this year, India has consumed 54,917 million gigabytes of data, according to TRAI.

Reuters

When you look at the consumption five years back in 2014, the number was 88 million gigabytes. Last year (2018), it was close to 46,404 million gigabytes. However, you¡¯ll be surprised to know that the current year¡¯s numbers were taken in September 2019, which means by the time this year ends, the amount of data consumed is only going to increase.

TRAI also looked at the number of users that subscribed to wireless data in India over the years. By 2014 end, India had 281.58 million users. This has skyrocketed to 664.80 million at the end of September 2019, growing 36.36 percent from 2018.

As per the report, one of the reasons for this massive growth in data consumption has to be the switch that people have made in various parts of the nation from the 2G network to 4G. Affordable data prices are also one of the reasons behind this upgrade.

Another reason for the switch is the ease of access to regional content, apart from just English and Hindi that is making adoption for users in rural areas seamless. Presence of government services, e-markets and social media is also influencing the switch.

And it looks like this is only going to rise in the coming years. In a study conducted by telecom equipment manufacturer Ericcson in 2017, it stated that average consumption of data by a user in India would come around 18 gigabytes per month -- a massive leap compared to 4-5 gigabytes per month currently. It also predicted that India will have around 800 million subscribers to data by 2023.