Highlighting the dismal state of mobile connectivity in our country, startling facts have emerged from an Ericsson report on mobile consumer’s insight in India: 60% of users face network connectivity issues, almost on a daily basis, and around half of all mobile users can’t even differentiate 3G and 2G level speeds!
The study: “The Changing Mobile Broadband Landscape” was conducted by Ericsson to understand the dynamics of mobile usage in India. 15,000 households across 33 cities were surveyed, along with 50 smartphone users at top 10 Indian cities which are supposed to be 100% covered by 3G network.
Around 4500 face to face interviews were conducted, and the survey was designed to represent 127 million smartphone users in the country. While the usage and application of technology in day to day life has tremendously increased over the last few years, the quality of service and especially the average speed experienced by Indians is dismal to say the least.
Some interesting highlights from the study:
- Although 26 is the median age of Indians right now (globally, we are among the youngest nations), the fastest adaption to smartphone is being witnessed in the age group 30-40 years, followed by 40-50 years.
- 34% of all women surveyed are using a smartphone, compared to 20% in 2013
- Households from lower economic strata are adapting to smartphones at a rapid speed. As of now, 45% of all smartphone users are from this category, compared to 38% in 2013.
- In the urban locations, one of out of three is using a smartphone (34% penetration rate); which increases to 41% in the top metros of India
- Whooping 48% of respondents couldn’t differentiate between 2G and 3G speeds. This happened because the prevalent speed provided by telecom operators is so bad, that the users can’t even understand the difference.
- 70% of all smartphone users stream videos on their devices; 60% of them use social networking
- 46% of all users perform some sort of search operation using mobiles
- 60-70% of all users face some kind of network connectivity issues (indoors, app usage, no signal). This should be a reminder for all telecom players regarding updating and optimizing their infrastructure
- Only 10% of respondents were able to understand the different data packs offered by their operators! 55% don’t even bother to read & understand the plans
The survey found that the biggest hindrance to smartphone adaption by non-users is the price factor. Close to 85% of all respondents admitted that affordability is the major issue while buying a smartphone, meanwhile 55% of them said that they didn’t see any usage or importance of owning smartphone. Hence, mobile vendors and the Govt. should kickstart a new awareness related campaign, if we want more penetration of smartphones and Internet.
We had reported earlier that overall broadband speed (mobile and desktop) in India is now second slowest in Asia, which quite alarming considering the “Digital India vision” proposed by the Govt. Still 1 billion people are without any form of Internet connectivity; and those who are able to access it only have meagre 2 mbps as average speed. It’s good to know that TRAI has woken up to this realization, and have proposed few recommendations to the Govt., but there is still miles to cover.
You can access the complete report from Ericsson here.