According to a study by Bernstien, India’s mobile data consumption is primarily from rural areas, with per capita data usage from tier 2 cities and towns growing to 35-40 GB per month. This is 30 per cent higher than the data use in metro cities.
The study highlighted that this puts Reliance Jio as sixth and Bharti Airtel as seventh most valued telecom companies globally.
As per the study, India also ranked sixth in the world for the most time spent on phone apps in 2023 which was 4.8 hours per day. It further added that Kolkata and Howrah are the only cities where 5G availability surpassed the 40 per cent mark. The other cities with more than 35 per cent 5G availability were all tier 2, including Vadodara, Surat, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, and Jodhpur.
The study also found that while data consumption in tier 1 cities was dominated by net commerce, digital payments, and online learning most of the data consumption in tier 2 cities was centred around Over the Top (OTT) platforms, communication, social media, and online gaming.
