With the ramp-up of 4G in China and the launch of 4G services in Indonesia, India and Thailand, more data points on 4G subscriber numbers and therefore penetration levels are now becoming available. This is contributing to a second dimension of growth?namely data use per subscriber. The higher 4G penetration can begin to drive rising data use per subscriber.
This does not come as a surprise, given sharply higher data throughput on 4G technologies such as LTE, and therefore higher data speeds on 4G (up to circa 21Mbps in practice) versus up to circa 6Mbps for HSDPA 3G (or '3.5G', as it is sometimes referred to). Thus 4G networks facilitate far higher data use. 4G smartphones also request automatic updates for some apps, and, unlike 3G smartphones, will automatically download an entire video clip, whether or not the subscriber watches the entire clip. As a result, a sharp increase in data use is very likely as customers switch to 4G, even if the browsing behaviour and the total time spent by consumers using wireless data do not initially change materially.
We believe rising data use per subscriber is partly driven by 3G-to-4G technology upgrades, growth of wireless data content and structural changes in consumer behaviour.
