With aggressive push by Reliance Jio in the past one year, 4G- LTE accounted for nearly 40% of the data subscriber base and 80%+ of data usage in India in the June 2017 quarter. LTE accounted for nearly 81% of the total wireless data consumption of 4.3 bn GB during the quarter.
Incumbents Off-loading Traffic to 3G
3G gained share (16.4% share for the quarter versus around 11% in the past two quarters) with 3G data volumes growing nearly 80% qoq. 3G’s share gain is misleading, however. The sharp surge in 3G data volumes is essentially on account of the incumbents’ LTE subscribers being pushed down to their 3G networks in areas where they have not rolled out LTE yet. To that extent, this sharp surge in 3G data volumes, if anything, reflects poorly on the relative state of LTE networks of the incumbents.
Data volumes grew 21.5% qoq and nearly 9X yoy to 4.3 bn GB on the back of a 15.4% qoq and 7X yoy jump in data usage per subscriber to 3.6 GB/month in the June 2017 quarter.
Source: TRAI’s June 2017 performance indicator report (PIR)