NEW DELHI: Indians are talking more on the phone than ever before. This was preceded by a 51% growth in 2016 over 2015.In comparison, call traffic on traditional networks rose on a year-on-year basis by 28.2% to 3.04 trillion minutes in 2017 and by 5.35% in 2016.“There is a bump in overall calling traffic in 2017, which includes (4G) LTE calling traffic. Over a billion Indians use mobile phones Interestingly, globally, cross-border OTT traffic has already surpassed carrier traffic — 552 billion minutes on average in 2016 for apps compared with 546 billion minutes of carrier traffic — as per data from TeleGeography. “As traditional carrier traffic has slumped, OTT traffic has risen to fill the void,” the research firm said in a blog post last month.For the time being, experts say telcos don’t need to lose sleep over the growth of OTT traffic. In comparison, app voice call volume is set to grow by 39% on year in 2018, 44% in 2019 and 46% in 2020.

Source: Economic Times March 24, 2018 02:26 UTC