Deloitte estimates that by 2020, 37% of total mobile data traffic would be offloaded to Wi-Fi. In other words, ~40% of the incremental data volumes through 2020 will be routed through Wi-Fi (admittedly, this is not a linear progression ? so, incremental share of Wi-Fi
could be back-loaded to 40%+ over the second half of the 2015-2020 period). In case 4G takes off in India eclipsing 3G, we expect an even larger % of data offloading to W-Fi. Such pronounced data offloading onto Wi-Fi will have implications for data economics (both revenues and margins) for the industry players.
TRAI recently reported that when a Wi-Fi network of 20 Wi-Fi hotspots was designed for a Tier-II city catering to around 40,000 subscribers and 10,000 concurrent users, the estimated cost per MB in Wi-Fi network could be less than 2paise (or 0.02 Rs) per MB. Consumers on an average pay around 23p (or 0.23 Rs) per MB for the data usage in the cellular network (2G/3G/4G).
In this backdrop, will the socialist approach of business by the Government of opening Wi-Fi Hostpots in crowded areas like Railway Stations, College Areas, etc and subsidize everything including mobile data 3G /4G dent Telecom Operators Profits ?
