Data usage per smartphone in India to grow 5-fold by 2023: Report

New Delhi: The monthly data consumption on every smartphone in India is estimated to grow nearly five times from 3.9 GB in 2017 to 18 GB by 2023, Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson said in its mobility report today.

"The total mobile data traffic per month in India is expected to grow 11 times during the forecast period (2017- 2023) from 1.3 EB (exabytes) to 14 EB by 2023. The report estimates that the monthly data usage per smartphone GB/month) in India will increase 5 times from 3.9 GB in 2017 to 18 GB by 2023," Ericsson said.

Globally, the mobile data growth witnessed highest year- on-year growth due to surge in data consumption in India.

"It shows the highest year-on-year mobile data growth globally since 2013, led by massive growth in India, and highlights the underlying need for mobile data," the report said.

India jumped to top spot in data usage in a period of 1 year after Reliance Jio launched its 4G (LTE) services.

"We expect LTE to be the most dominant technology in India by 2023. LTE will account for more than 60 per cent of the total subscriptions in the country by 2023 compared to the 12 per cent LTE subscriptions in 2017," Ericsson India Managing Director Nitin Bansal.

The report estimates that there will be around 800 million VoLTE (vocie over 4G) subscribers in India by 2023.

At present entire network of Reliance Jio supports VoLTE (voice over 4G) calls which are upgraded version of calls made using internet connections. Bharti Airtel too is launching VoLTE services gradually across the country.

As per the report, there will be 1 billion 5G subscriptions for enhanced mobile broadband by 2023.

Ericsson Mobility report expects 5G to cover over 20 percent of the world's population by the end of 2023 and first first commercial networks based on 5G technology are expected to go live in 2019, with major deployments from 2020.

"Early 5G deployments are foreseen in several markets, including the US, South Korea, Japan and China," the report said.