Riding on 4G consumption, the overall data traffic in India increased by 47 percent in 2019 while average monthly data usage per user surpassed 11GB in December last year, a new report said on Thursday. 4G constituted 96 percent of the total data traffic consumed across the country while 3G data traffic registered its highest-ever decline of 30 percent.

"We believe the migration of subscribers to 4G will continue to drive broadband growth in the country. The Indian telcos will need to consider other connectivity solutions to leverage the new opportunities and to address the growing data consumption," said Sanjay Malik, Senior Vice President and Head of India Market, Nokia. The video consumption was fueled by the increasing number of over-the-top (OTT) platforms with over 30 platforms in India, easy availability of regional content, aggressive distribution strategy, and innovations like sachet pricing and mobile-only packs by OTT players.

The average time spent on OTT platforms in India is 70 minutes/day."The upcoming 4K/8K videos and Industry 4.0 solutions that promise to enhance productivity and bring down expenses for the industries across different verticals, demand ultra high speed, and extremely low latency," Malik added.

The average monthly data usage grew 16 percent annually due to increase in 4G network upgrades, low data prices, affordable smartphones, and the ever-increasing popularity of videos. The number of 4G handsets devices grew 1.5 times to reach 501 million units due to the availability of a range of feature-rich models and competitive prices, said Nokia's annual Mobile Broadband India Traffic Index (MBiT). India data traffic recorded a growth of 44 times in the last four years, from 2015-19, which is one of the highest in the world."The number of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) smartphones grew to 432 million. Broadband penetration is 47 percent, which is significantly lower than China (95 percent) and other European nations at around 95-115 percent," the findings showed.