Indian telecom operators are very proud of the fact that they provide 4G data at one of the cheapest rates in the entire world. The number of 4G subscribers have also increased in India due to the same reason. However, it is interesting to note that even though the data is very cheap in India, the number of users who consume more than 1GB daily data have fallen. Of course, this isn’t directly related to the price of the data, but many things including data spending habits and basic use cases of the internet.
India Lost Heavy Internet Users in Q1 2021 As Compared to Q1 2020
According to an Opensignal report - ‘Quantifying The Impact of 5G and COVID-19 On Mobile Data Consumption’, every country is divided in two types of customers. The first kind of customer is one who is a light internet user and consumes less than 50MB daily data and the second is the heavy internet user who consumes more than 1GB daily data. The telecom companies earn a majority of their revenue from the heavy users. The Opensignal report focused on the increase and decrease of heavy and light internet users pre-COVID-19 pandemic and post that. Through the report, it was found that India was one of the select nations which lost heavy internet users post the pandemic. This is strange given the fact that pandemic boosted the role of internet in the country as people migrated and worked from their homes. But there was a positive mentioned in the report as well. India saw a decline in the number of light internet users. This is a positive because now more and more people are using more than 50MB data in a day. With the arrival of better 4G networks in rural areas of the country, more heavy users should be added in India and as the role of internet and its use cases increase, the number of light users will keep on reducing too. The number of heavy internet users should also proliferate once more users upgrade to 4G network services and 4G smartphones in the country.
