Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: Mobile data usage is on the rise and as per ratings agency ICRA studay, data revenues for the Indian telecom companies would grow to Rs 95,500 crore by 2020-21.
The study also revealed that data revenues are expected to contribute 34 percent to the total mobile service revenues from the current levels of around 20 percent.
And having said that, latest data showed that India had 278 million data users in the March quarter downloading 202 million GB at an average of 0.7 GB per user.
Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel led the group with 45 million gigabyte (GB) of data usage per month in the March quarter coming from about 55 million users.
Vodafone came in second with 47 million users downloading 28 million GB of data at an average 0.6 GB per user in the March quarter.
However, what was surprising was that Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's telecom arm Reliance Jio came in at the sixth place with 13 million GB being downloaded even before its commercial launch.
Jio, which has done a pilot launch for its employees and their relatives and friends, saw its 70 lakh users download 13 million GB of data at an average of 19.2 GB per user.
The company is offering the service free to its employees and at a nominal cost to their relatives. The speed of 4G is also said to be behind the high data usage.
Taken together, India had 278 million data users in the said quarter downloading 202 million GB at an average of 0.7 GB per user.
According to the data, Jio generated as much as 1.8 million GB monthly data usage in a few states like Gujarat. The company is eyeing 2.5 million subscribers before it commercially launches operations in the next few months.
At 2.5 million users, it is estimated to generate 50 million GB of monthly data. Insiders said Jio's ultimate aim is to take this figure to 1 billion GB from a base of 100 million subscribers within a year of launch.
The data further showed that Jio network racking up an average of 1.89 GB downloaded per user everyday nationally. The highest came in Kashmir, with an average download of 3.48 GB a day, followed by the North-East with 2.52 GB and Rajasthan 2.44 GB.
Jammu registered 2.4 GB of daily data usage for the telecom venture while Jharkhand, Assam, Odisha, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh-West, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh-East saw more than 2 GB per user per day.
The lowest usage was recorded at 0.89 GB per user per day in Goa while it was below national average in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata, Telangana and Mumbai.
Voice usage per subscriber per day averaged 25 minutes nationally, with Delhi topping the chart with 31 minutes. Odisha was a close second with 30 minutes, followed by Bihar (29 minutes) and Jharkhand and Kolkata (28 minutes each).
The lowest voice usage, according to the data, came from Kerala, Maharashtra and Gujarat at 18 minutes per user per day.
With PTI Inputs
