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‘The end of American Internet’: Paytm CEO as India, China corner nearly 50% of global mobile traffic

Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Sunday said that the era of American internet was ending with the arrival of India and China, which now account for nearly 50 percent of global mobile traffic.

“It’s the end of American Internet as we knew it,” he tweeted in response to a graph shared by industry analyst Benedict Evans. The graph, shared on Twitter, shows that India and China account for nearly half of the global mobile traffic. The Paytm boss said the rise in mobile traffic is one of the big reasons India’s strong data governance law is timely.

In June this year, India released a Draft National Data Governance Framework Policy for public consultation. Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that his government’s vision is to build a modern framework for data governance that will be a kinetic enabler of India’s Digital Economy.

In the last decade, India’s share of mobile traffic increased from 2 percent to 21 percent. According to a November Ericsson Mobility report, rapid 5G deployment by Indian telecom companies will enable 5G subscriptions to reach approximately 31 million by the end of 2022 and 690 million by 2028.

Total mobile data traffic in India is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 19 per cent from 18 exabytes (EB) per month in 2022 to 53 EB per month in 2028.

This is due to rapid growth in the number of smartphone users as well as an increase in average smartphone usage. Smartphone subscriptions in India are expected to rise from 77 percent in 2022 to 94 percent in 2028 as a percentage of total mobile subscriptions.

The number of 4G subscriptions in India is predicted to reach its peak in 2024 at about 930 million, then fall to an estimated 570 million by the year 2028. According to the report, there will be 8.4 billion total mobile subscriptions by the end of 2022 and 9.2 billion by the end of 2028.

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