Data consumption to rise by nearly 40% in 3-5 years: Tata Comm

Data consumption over Internet is expected to rise by around 40 per cent in the next 3-5 years on the back of smart devices and phones, an industry official has said.

However, it will be a challenge for operators to maintain pace with the data consumption growth in view of amount of spectrum available at present, Tata Communications, Mobile Segment Strategy, Vice-President Tim Sherwood told PTI.

When asked data growth in India, he said, "... somewhere around 40 per cent year on year type of growth, certainly for the next 3-5 years and maybe even longer depending on how fast these smartphones and smart devices penetrate."

"... so ultimately we see that the network capacity will be always behind the demand by users," he said, adding the operators should have a policy and other types of creative approaches like incorporating Wi-fi offload as part of effectively supplementing the spectrum capacity.

As per Internet and Mobile Association of India's (IAMAI) report on mobile Internet usage, India is expected to have close to 165 million mobile Internet users by March 2015, up from 87.1 million in December 2012 as people are increasingly accessing the web through mobile devices and dongles.