Most of India’s data traffic comes from regional video streaming

The multi-lingual country of India has internet users surfing the web in search of streaming videos online in their own regional languages.

People watching video on cell phone. Image Source: IANS

Key Highlights

Almost 80% data traffic in India stems from video streaming.

Hindi is the most popular regional language in video.

Indian users are on their mobiles for 3 hours mainly for social networking.

Majority of Indians use the internet for online video streaming. Nearly 80% of total data traffic stems from it, a report by CRISIL said on Tuesday.

“Data from operators show that videos contributes nearly 80% to total data traffic (direct and indirect) in India,” the report said.

While the report showed this pattern of online video streaming was similar to many ‘evolved markets,’ it said that videos were being watched in regional languages, mainly Hindi.

“The video viewership is dominated by regional languages – nearly 60% in Hindi and some 35% in other regional languages,” the report added.

Another report showed Indians mostly use the internet for social networking. With 88.79% of households using the internet to access platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook, a report by Mint quoting the ICE 360° survey data said.

However for entertainment purposes the country’s citizens are not far behind with 81.95% households using the internet for downloading songs and movies, the report said.

“Time spent by Indians is already in line with evolved markets. On average, Indian users are on their mobiles for 3 hours, bulk of it on social media and messaging apps,” CRISIL report said.

In comparison US citizens also spend 3 hours and 20 minutes on an average surfing the net.

India’s burgeoning realisation of internet is slow in the rural areas. “Urban internet usage is nearly 68-70% in comparison rural is only 13%," Care Ratings telecom analyst, Gaurav Dixit said.

Despite majority of Indians streaming videos online India’s internet speed was the slowest in top LTE markets.

Image Source: CRISIL report

“Evolution of content in regional languages will play a pivotal role as rural subscribers grow faster,” the report said.

Last week, the Mukesh Ambani-backed Reliance Jio announced the launch of JioPhones which are effectively free of cost. The feature phone supports 22 Indian languages and will be available for pre-bookings on August 24 for a refundable security deposit of Rs 1500.

JioPhone was launched along with Rs 153 Jio Dhan Dhana Dhan plan for the JioPhone users and two data sachets of Rs 24 and Rs 54 as well.

Currently the lack of Wi-Fi infrastructure in the country boosts mobile operator networks; however the report pointed out that this will change once plans to put in place Wi-Fi hotspot materialise.

This will moderate the mobile data consumption in the country which CRISIL said will grow four-fold in the next five fiscal years.

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