How the internet will grow in India

By 2021, it is estimated that internet users will account for 59% of India’s population, up from 28% currently, with mobile data traffic seen rising seven-fold says a report released by Cisco

Increase in internet users, devices and connections

India will have 829 million internet users (59% of population) in 2021, up from 373 million (28% of population) in 2016

India will have 2 billion networked devices in 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016

67% of all networked devices will be mobile-connected by 2021

Increase in mobile, internet video

Mobile data traffic will grow seven-fold from 2016 to 2021, a compound annual growth rate of 49%

Mobile data traffic in 2021 will be equivalent to 88 times the volume of all of India’s internet traffic in 2005

Internet Protocol (IP) video will be 83% of all IP traffic in 2021, up from 69% in 2016

Internet video traffic will grow five-fold from 2016 to 2021, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40%

Total internet video traffic (business and consumer combined) will be 76% of all internet traffic in 2021, up from 57% in 2016

High definition will comprise 51.4% of all internet video traffic in 2021, up from 12% in 2016 (87.9% CAGR)

84 billion minutes (159,201 years) of video content will flow through the internet each month in 2021. That’s 31,840 minutes of video streamed or downloaded every second

Key findings and milestones from global traffic projections and service adoption trends

Global IP traffic is expected to reach 278 exabytes per month by 2021, up from 96 exabytes per month in 2016. Global IP traffic is expected to reach an annual run rate of 3.3 zettabytes by 2021

The total number of public Wi-Fi hotspots (including homespots) will grow six-fold from 2016 to 2021 from 94 million in 2016 to 541.6 million by 2021

The total number of Wi-Fi homespots will grow from 85 million in 2016 to 526.2 million by 2021

The leading hotspot countries are: China (170 million by 2021), US (86 million by 2021), Japan (33 million by 2021), and France (30 million by 2021)

Source: Cisco VNI