Facebook, Twitter driving greater data consumption in the country

Social media channels and websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are driving greater data consumption in India, and each smartphone user is expected to consume 11 gigabytes of data each month in the next five years, according to a report.

According to Ericsson Mobility Report 2017, Indian consumers are increasingly watching videos on their smartphones. The ability to stream live videos on the most popular social media channels- Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has also added to data consumption in the country.

Higher video and multimedia consumption and growth in mobile banking transactions and digital payments are also fueling higher data traffic in the country.

Other factors include higher smartphone adoption, changing user behaviour and disruptive pricing strategies of operators.

The report further says that 97 percent of mobile data traffic in India will be smartphone traffic in the next five years.

Data traffic in India is expected to grow at a rate of around 40 percent, reaching almost 8 Exabytes of data per month compared to around 1 Exabytes consumed by the end of 2016.

“As new apps continue to emerge and usage behaviour evolves, network performance will play an even bigger role in determining smartphone users’ loyalty towards their operators. In fact, Mobile broadband experience in India is five times more effective in driving loyalty than tariff structure and pricing,” said Nitin Bansal, Head of Network Products, Ericsson India.

According to Ericsson, Indian smartphone owners have devised their own mental indices to measure and evaluate network performance.

The top four indicators consumers use to judge network performance in India are- time taken to upload pictures to social media, time taken to open a web page,  time taken for a video to buffer or load and download time for email attachments .

As many as 40 percent of 4G users judge network performance by video loading and video buffering while streaming. For nearly half of 3G users, the time taken to load a web page is the prime indicator of a positive experience.

As per the report, 4G users are nearly 1.5 times more satisfied than 3G users in India, and 4G users tend to use more data centric services.