‘Indian mobile users to reach 990 million by 2020’

Leaping ahead with a 12-fold growth from 2015, the number of mobile users in India is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.4 per cent to 990.2 million, covering about 71 per cent of the country’s population, by 2020, according to a rep ort by networking giant Cisco.

In 2015, India had 798.4 million mobile users, covering 61 per cent of India’s population, increasing 8 per cent from 737.5 million in the previous year.

Globally, the growth rate of mobile users will reach will reach 5.5 billion users by 2020, representing 70 per cent of the global population.

Adoption of mobile devices, increased mobile coverage, and demand for mobile content are driving user growth two times faster than the global population over the next five years.

This surge of mobile users, smart devices, mobile video and 4G networks will increase mobile data traffic eight-fold over the next five years, the report says.

Mobile data traffic generated is forecast to grow 12-fold to reach 1.7 Exabyte per month by 2020, driven by availability of cheaper smartphones and affordable data tariffs.

“The number of mobile subscribers is growing rapidly, and bandwidth demand for data and video is increasing,” said Sanjay Kaul, managing director of service provider business at Cisco India & SAARC.

The report also says 55 per cent of mobile connections in India will be “smart” connections by 2020, while 92 per cent mobile data traffic will be “smart” traffic by 2020, up from 53 per cent in 2015.

Kaul also highlighted on the need for networks to allow all devices to be connected transparently, considering the proliferation of mobile and portable devices.

“Next 5 years are projected to provide unabated mobile video adoption,” he said.

Video content will contribute to 72 per cent of India’s mobile data traffic by 2020, compared to 40 per cent at the end of 2015. By 2017, video content will reach 50 per cent of India’s mobile data traffic.