It has been about 18 months since 5G was launched in India. Now, 5G users in the country consume 3.6 times more data than 4G consumers. It has also led to a growth in overall data consumption. Over the last five years, mobile data traffic in India grew at 26% CAGR, reaching 17.4 EB per month in 2023. One of the major contributors to the growth in data consumption is 5G at no additional cost coupled with unlimited data. With time, as more people upgrade to 5G phones and when 5G is rolled out in more towns and cities, the overall data consumption will increase.
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Nokia has just released its latest Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) report of 2024. The report mentioned that 5G contributed 15% of all the data traffic in 2023. In the metro circles, 5G had a 20% share in the overall mobile data traffic. So out of every 5GB of data consumed, 1GB was 5G. The 5G device ecosystem in India has still not reached a mature point but is evolving rapidly as more affordable devices come into the market.
Nokia said, approximately 17% of active 4G devices, totalling 134 million out of 796 million, are 5G capable in India. The numbers would rise as people upgrade to 5G devices in the coming months and years. As per the report, the average monthly data traffic per user also surged by 24% year-on-year in 2023, reaching 24.1GB per user per month.
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5G FWA (Fixed-Wireless Access) is spreading fast throughout the country, with Jio leading the charge. Nokia in its report that 5G FWA users are estimated to consume 2.5 times more data than average 5G users.
According to the report, the key tech themes that will shape the world leading up to 2030 will include AI/ML, Metaverse, Cloud, and Web 3.0, among others.
Note: one Exabyte is equal to 1,000 petabytes; one Petabyte is equal to 1,000 Terabytes.
