Mobile Internet Traffic Surges in Russia This Year

Mobile subscribers in Russia downloaded and sent more data over the first nine months of 2019 than in the whole of 2018, Izvestia writes citing data provided by the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media.

According to the official data, internet traffic in the country reached almost 10.9 billion gigabytes from January to September 2019 compared to 10.2 billion during 2018.

The development of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, which make it possible to download more data, interest in “heavy” video content and low cost of services, despite growing tariffs, are the reasons for traffic growth, analysts say.

So far, mobile traffic in Russia is still smaller than fixed Internet traffic, but the former is growing slower than cellular traffic, with a data amount increase of 18.5% over the past year.

According to TelecomDaily Director General Denis Kuskov, the data provided by the Ministry of Communications is conservative, and there is every likelihood that the mobile traffic growth rate was even higher.

According to his estimates, Russian mobile users used 10-11 GB of traffic every month by the end of this year compared to 6-7 GB a year ago. One of the primary reasons for that is an increase in coverage and bandwidth of 4G networks both in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as in other regions.

“A user can download much more data per unit of time than in 3G, and subscribers take advantage of that, increasing traffic consumption and their payments to operators,” the expert stressed.