India to have 780 million VoLTE subscribers by 2023: Ericsson report

The June 2018 Edition of Ericsson's Mobility Report shows that India could be home to over 975 mobile subscribers by 2023, 780 million of whom are expected to have VoLTE connections.

Ericsson, mobile data traffic, Ericsson Mobility Report, global smartphone users, India VoLTE connections, 5G rollout, Indian mobile subscribers, 5G services, Internet of Things, 5G bandwidths, IoT devices

India will have 975 million smartphone users by 2023, a growth of 2.5 times from current levels. (Image Source: Reuters)

India will have 975 million smartphone users by 2023, a growth of 2.5 times from current levels. This estimate has been made by the latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, which also indicates that India could be home to 780 million VoLTE connections in the next five years.

The June edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report shows that India’s mobile data traffic could increase five-fold for the forecast period. While the current levels stand at 1.9 exabytes (EB), 2023 is expected to see India cross 10EB of data traffic. This indicates that the data usage per smartphone per month could increase from 2017 levels of 5.7GB to a possible 13.7GB in five years.

Meanwhile, the report also showed the rise in mobile subscriptions during Q1 2018, with over 98 million new subscribers being added globally. Of these, China recorded over 53 million new subscriptions, while India was second with more than 16 million new subscribers each.

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Also read:Telecom subscriber base again crosses 1.2 billion mark in March

According to the report, the global rollout of 5G services will first be witnessed in North America, with the US set to introduce these services between the end of 2018 and mid-2019. Major 5G deployments, though, are not expected before 2020. Ericsson estimates that by 2023, over 1 billion mobile networks could be based on 5G, which would account for over 12 per cent of all mobile subscriptions.

While over 50 per cent of North America’s users can be expected to switch to 5G in five years, 34 per cent of North East Asians and 21 per cent of Western European users could switch to 5G technology by the same duration.

While Ericsson sees 5G-compatible smartphones being launched in the later part of 2018, phones supporting mid-band 5G bandwidth could be expected early next year, and 5G phones supporting high-frequency bands could be expected by mid-2019.

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With the rollout of 5G services, Ericsson expects users worldwide to consume 107EB of data per month, enough for every consumer to stream full HD videos for 10 hours. This report also estimates over 3.5 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connections globally, driven by IoT development in China. India is estimated to be home to 72 million such devices by 2023.