India’s Internet user base will touch 829 million (59% penetration) in 2021 from the existing base of 373 million as of 2016, according to network solution provider Cisco’s latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) report. Additionally, the number of connected devices is expected to go up till 2 billion in 2021, from 1.4 billion devices in 2016. The reports also states that data usage on Internet is expected to grow 4x times at a CAGR of 30% to 6.5 Exabytes per month in 2021, up from 1.7 Exabytes per month as of 2016. But this growth will be led by video, says the Cisco. It also predicted the segments including video and M2M will drive this growth. Following is a lowdown of the report: Video to drive most growth Video content is projected to account for 76% of all traffic in India by 2021, up from the current 57% share. Video has taken centre stage in India after entry of giants—Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. India will generate 84 billion Internet video minutes per month by 2021, which is equivalent to 160,000 years of video per month, or about 32,000 video minutes every second. IoT to closely follow According to the index, M2M (Machine-to-Machine) or IoT related connections will follow closely representing 22% of the total 2 billion devices and connections. M2M will also represent around 5% of Internet traffic by 2021. Cisco said that M2M applications such as smart (dashboard) meters, tracking devices, digital health monitors will help increase data…
