1,380 million mobile connected devices in India by 2021

According to the 11th annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), mobile data traffic in India will grow seven-fold by 2021 and mobile video traffic will show an increase by over 11fold. “Video will be 75 per cent of India’s mobile data traffic by 2021, compared to 49 per cent at the end of 2016 and 3G connections will surpass 2G connections by 2019,” the report noted. It revealed that 59.6 million net new devices and connections were added in India to the mobile network in 2016. 

“Much of this growth will be fuelled by massive consumer adoption of smartphones, IoT, smart devices and use of machine-to-machine connections with an estimated 1,380 million mobile-connected devices by 2021,” said Sanjay Kaul, Managing Director (Service Provider Business) Cisco India and Saarc. Globally, more people will be using mobile phones than bank accounts, running water or even landlines by 2021. The report claimed that by 2021, 5.5 billion people will be using mobile phones around the globe. Cisco predicted that strong growth in mobile users, smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) connections as well as network speed improvements and mobile video consumption will increase mobile data traffic seven-fold over the next five years. 

It is also anticipated that large-scale deployments of 5G infrastructures will begin by 2020. “With the proliferation of IoT, live mobile video, augmented and virtual reality applications, 5G technology will have significant relevance not just for mobility but rather for networking as a whole,” said Doug Webster, Vice President of Service Provider Marketing at Cisco. The average smartphone in India generated 559MB mobile data traffic per month in 2016, as compared to 430MB per month in 2015, the report added.